Earlier today, pranky activist group the Yes Men, posing as General Electric, issued a press release announcing that the company would be “gifting its entire 2010 tax refund, worth $3.2 Billion, to the US Treasury on April 18, Tax Day.” Amazingly, the Associated Press ran with the bogus story. And the timing could have been more perfect. Read more »
In a fit of overzealous pandering, the Associated Press mistook a Tea Bagger for American hero Neil Armstrong the other day. Oopsies: A captioning error. The AP issued a correction, but the media continued to misreport the caption. That’s not him in the photo, but did the moon walker actually attend Glenn Beck’s white power picnic in DC? Read more »
Admitting to covering up the source of his presidential HOPE portrait, Shepard Fairey said his lying and evidence destruction was merely an attempt to conceal his “mistake” of actually believing he had used a different image. The Associated Press has fired back, calling the graphic design-stealing artist’s story completely implausible and saying his alleged mistake was only an effort “to spin those bad acts in the best light possible to the Court and the public.” In a press release accompanying amendments to their countersuit, the AP also questions the integrity of Fairey’s dreams about George Clooney. Read more »
In a searing blow to counter culture and the integrity of his career, graphic design stealing artist Shepard Fairey admitted he lied about the source of his presidential HOPE portrait in his ongoing legal dispute with the Associated Press. In a statement released Friday on his website, he discussed the blatant thievery and apologized, kinda: Read more »
The Associated Press issued a statement denying claims they were planning to charge bloggers $2.50 a word to quote their content in a response to recent criticisms of their automated licensing forms, part of plans to stop the “misappropriation of news on the internet.” Spokesperson Paul Colford explained that the iCopyright form drawing so much ire “is not aimed at bloggers. It is intended to make it easy for people who want to license AP content to do so.” Read more »
Just as his Boston vandalism charges are wrapped up with a guilty plea, Shepard Fairey’s other legal problems are getting more complex. Mannie Garcia, the freelance photographer who shot the Barack Obama photo on which Fairey based his iconic “Hope” portrait, is jumping in the fray between the appropriating artist and the Associated Press. Garcia is challenging the AP’s lawsuit against Shepard Fairey for copyright infringement, filing a motion that he is the actual owner of rights to the photo. Read more »
In one corner: Shepard Fairey, an artist who has built his empire on appropriated art but files cease and desist letters to artists who co-opt his work even for parody purposes. In the other corner: The Associated Press, the world’s biggest news service sometimes less accurate than MTV that claims “fair use” only applies to them, not others. These two challengers will vie to win a new competition organized by Evan Roth, the Graffiti Research Lab co-founder and Hova textualizer, who writes: Read more »
This past Sunday, the Associated Press reported that illegal gun purchasing rapper T.I. would only have to serve 2 months in prison instead of the 1 year and 1 day he was sentenced to, claiming that 305 days of house arrest would go towards his term, but they got the story wrong. And shockingly, it was MTV News that corrected them. In reality, T.I. will have to do a minimum of 10 months and might be able to “shave almost 55 days off his sentence” for good behavior. Apparently they didn’t read the report correctly: “Once T.I. completes the prison term, he will still have to serve out the remainder of his home confinement” which amounts to about 2 months. |Miss Info|
On Tuesday, lawyers for artist Shepard Fairey filed their countersuit against the Associated Press, alleging that his use of one of their photos 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 lawyers also contend the AP is engaged in similar behavior to that they’ve accused Fairey of. One section of the document details more than a dozen instances of the AP copyrighting and profiting from photos that are nearly or exclusively composed of copyrighted artworks they don’t have permission to, including works by Fairey, Banksy, Jeff Koons and other artists. Read more »
In a recent statement, artist Shepard Fairey explains some reasoning behind his lawsuit against The Associated Press, which he hopes will protect him from copyright infringement claims over his “Hope” portrait of President Obama. The strange thing is that Fairey acknowledges referencing a photo by AP photographer Mannie Garcia, but claims it was “not the one being circulated by press.” However, that’s not true as James Danziger, a gallerist who showed Garcia’s referenced photo in an exhibit of Obama imagery, points out in an open letter to Fairey: Read more »
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