AP To Shepard Fairey: No You Can’t
As you may have heard, some graphic sleuths reverse engineered the now iconic and Smithsonian housed “HOPE” illustration that Shepard Fairey created for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and discovered that it was copied from a photograph taken by Associated Press employee Manny Garcia in 2006. Well the news disseminating wire service isn’t so happy about the infraction and decided to get all gangster on the infamous wheatpasting artist, by suing him, demanding “credit and compensation.” The AP is claiming copyright infringement while Fairey’s high profile lawyer says it’s protected under fair use statutes.
This latest bit of legal drama has reignited the controversy over Shepard’s tendency to steal and slightly modify images that he does not credit and will no doubt give even more credence to Mark Vallen’s theory—which despite its flaws—makes a hell of a lot more sense than this piss poor attempt. Either way, this will be an interesting case to follow and judging from the preliminary facts, the AP certainly has a stronger case against Shepard than he did when he sued graphic designer Baxter Orr back in April of last year for the same thing.
Editor-in-Chief:
TEAM AP.
Fairey should show how much he cares about his "cause" by joining a real one, like a union.
Fairey has no ethics. In court he pleads not guilty and then brags on his site about the same works he does not acknowledge in court. He has enough money to own up to his work in court.
Look up Brian Sherwin's reply to the Jamie O'Shea Mark Vallen rant. He points out that O'Shea's critique of Vallen was nothing but damage control leading up to Sheps big exhibit. I think the damage has been done. Now there is rumors floating around that Obey clothing is made in sweat shops. What is next?
[...] sounds like the latest effort to crack down on copyright violations, a follow-up to this years lawsuit against HOPE artist Shepard Fairey and last year’s threat to charge bloggers $12.50 for the fair use of 5-word [...]
[...] countersuit against The Associated Press, alleging that his use of an AP photo of Barack Obama in creating the iconic “Hope†portrait is protected within the bounds of fair use. Using the “doctrine of unclean hands,†Fairey’s [...]