New wrinkle in Obama poster dispute
Shepard Fairey, the artist whose “Hope” poster of Barack Obama became an iconic emblem of the presidential campaign, has admitted that he lied about which photograph from The Associated Press he used as his source, and that he then covered up evidence to conceal his lie.
Fairey’s admission, which he made public on Friday, threw his legal battle with the news agency into disarray.
The AP claimed in January that Fairey owed it credit and compensation for using the photograph. But in February Fairey sued the AP, seeking a declaratory judgment that the poster did not infringe on the agency’s copyrights and that he was entitled to the image under the “fair use” exception of the copyright law. The AP countersued in March, saying Fairey had misappropriated the photograph.
Fairey told the agency — and his own lawyers — that he had used a photograph from an April 27, 2006 event about Darfur at the National Press Club in Washington where Obama was seated next to the actor George Clooney. Instead, the photograph he used was from the same event, but was a solo image of Obama’s head, tilted in intense concentration...
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Fairey’s admission, which he made public on Friday, threw his legal battle with the news agency into disarray.
The AP claimed in January that Fairey owed it credit and compensation for using the photograph. But in February Fairey sued the AP, seeking a declaratory judgment that the poster did not infringe on the agency’s copyrights and that he was entitled to the image under the “fair use” exception of the copyright law. The AP countersued in March, saying Fairey had misappropriated the photograph.
Fairey told the agency — and his own lawyers — that he had used a photograph from an April 27, 2006 event about Darfur at the National Press Club in Washington where Obama was seated next to the actor George Clooney. Instead, the photograph he used was from the same event, but was a solo image of Obama’s head, tilted in intense concentration...