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Shepard Fairey Pleads Guilty Over Obama ‘Hope’ Image
- samstave 15y agoI don't think that photographs of publicly elected officials should be copyright-able in this context: it should be fair use.
- gee_totes 15y agoShepard Fairey needs to find himself a new legal team. If his current legal team could make a good 'fair use' defense for the Obama image, then Fairey probably wouldn't feel the urge to destroy evidence in order to win his case. Meanwhile, his legal team was out issuing 'cease-and-desist' letters over the Obey Steelers baby dolls. http://gawker.com/5166157/obey-trademark-law http://gawker.com/5166157/obey-trademark-law
- bradleyland 15y agoThe article does a poor job of explaining specifically why he may see jail time. Misuse of a copyrighted image in itself is rarely cause for imprisonment (at least today). Fairey is in hot water not because of the copyright issue, but because of the falsified evidence he provided as part of his lawsuit against the AP. So everyone understands the series of events, Fairey saw the heat coming and filed suit against the AP pre-emptively. In that suit, it is now clear that he did broke some laws completely unrelated to the copyright infringement. This statement is based on the quote (from this article): "...later admitted that he had been mistaken and had tried to conceal his mistake, by destroying documents and fabricating others." So, Fairey, like others before him, will not suffer the greatest penalty from his canonical crimes, but for his subsequent actions attempting to avoid the consequences and lying to the courts.