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.

Hoarding History

MoveOn.org is giving away free stickers commemorating Barack Obama's November 4 win. Headed "Yes we did," a play on Obama's speech "Yes we can," they're designed by Shepard Fairey, one of my favourite street artists.

Tasty, tasty. Would've ordered a print, too, but they're already sold out. Guess I'll have to settle for vacuum-sealing my Nov. 5 copy of the NYT.

Neat how there's also an option to let MoveOn shill the stickies on your Facebook page. It was one of those rare instances where I was like, "Yes, marketer, please use me."

Could the Othello Treatment Earn Hillary the Democratic Vote?

Hillary wins definitively in Ohio and Texas. That's pretty much that, isn't it? Unless something crazy happens, people are only going to congregate more readily around the safe choice as we draw closer to November.

Got this in my email this morning. I don't know whether or not it's true, and you can call it politics as usual if you want -- but I sure as hell won't put a President in office that uses my skin color to condemn me.

Even if she's a woman.

See the ad for which Camp Hillary is accused of darkening Obama's skin color to highlight ... what? Everything we already knew?