AP Goes Gunning for Shepard Fairey

The Associated Press is going after Shepard Fairey for taking an Obama photo taken by an AP news photographer -- and turning it into one of the most iconic art images of the Obama movement.

From TechCrunch:

Fair use is under attack, and the AP is leading the charge. Artists like Fairey take copyrighted images and reinterpret them all the time. Many argue that is what art is. Fairey’s Obama poster certainly made a bigger impact on our culture than the original image, which he reportedly found by doing a Google image search. He is being represented by the Stanford Fair Use Project.

The argument follows that Fairey should be protected under Fair Use because the image was changed so significantly that even AP didn't know it was derived from one of their own until a few weeks ago.

Last year AP tried waging war against bloggers over fair use of its news material. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington boycotted it.

Watch While I Distill a Story and LINK BACK.

For those that have been following the teacup-tempest, no formal guidelines were formed between the Associated Press and bloggers -- which will most likely continue excerpting bits of Associated Press subscription content at will.

Last week the AP and the Media Bloggers Association were supposed to meet to negotiate some kind of good-faith agreement on legitimately quoting paid content. No meeting occurred. Probably for the better: most bloggers were against it anyway, because the AP shouldn't be able to make content use restrictions that are more stringent than actual fair use law (see Wikipedia hash-out on that snaggly bad-boy).

AP says it continues to conduct "constructive [exchanges]" with members of the blogging community, but the MBA is just happy nobody had to go to court.

AP Wages War Against Bloggers

In particular, it takes issue with bloggers that quote extensively from an article, even if they link back to it. Michael Arrington has already boycotted the AP on TechCrunch.

Via.