The 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 le

The 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.