ethics question or how to start an argument in one easy step

[jann1033]

on another site i go to the ? came up about this guy who imo plagerizes others work and sells it...just wonder, what some would consider objectionable. would you care if someone used your photo without your permission, altered it and then made money from it or do you think the fact you took it would be "honor " enough ...in reality though most articles i have read about this, the original photographer maybe gets his name listed, usually not since the suit is between the poster guy and the AP( one article said the original photo is having good sales however)

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/shepard-fairey-sues-associated-press-over-obama-poster/

 

[DVC Jen]

I would be FURIOUS. Doesn't copyright laws prohibit something like that?

 

[jann1033]

yad think but http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-melber/the-ap-hase-no-case-again_b_165068.html

parts from link quoted below

"The term "fair use" gets batted around a lot, often incorrectly, and so deserves some explanation. At the most general level, copyright law prohibits you from copying another person's original creative work. That means you're typically not allowed to create work using someone else's original unless you pay that person. "Fair use" is an exception to this rule: it says that sometimes you don't have to pay someone to use his or her original work. Whether you do--that is, whether your new work qualifies as "fair use"--depends on what, exactly, the original work is, how much of it you're using, how you transform it, and whether your new work hurts the commercial market for the original. (Note that the issue has nothing to do with whether anyone thinks your use is "fair.")

By far the most important factor is how you transform the original work--but, contrary to popular belief, the transformation that really matters is the conceptual one, not the physical one."


"The court explained that a "transformative" work adds something new to the original work, alters its message or meaning, takes on a different character or furthers a different purpose."
"The other "fair use" factors matter too, and courts have to assess all of them. Taking from a published work is more likely to constitute "fair use" than taking from an unpublished one. The less you use of an original work, and the less your work harms the commercial value of the original, the more likely your work will fall under "fair use." But these factors pale in comparison to the issue of transformation. (This, by the way, is why it is never a question of what "percentage" you use of an original work--a pervasive misunderstanding in the art world. The question is how significant to the original was the part you used, and how much did you transform that part to create your new work?)"

this was enough to "Tranform" the work

"he simplified the original image, straightening lines to make Obama look "strong"; distilled the color scheme into a modified flag motif; added a hybrid Fairey/campaign logo; and slapped on a large PROGRESS banner."

i thought this was interesting since it kind of makes you feel totally unprotected, all someone has to do is posterize it and it's ok...not ok to me but maybe to courts

 

[fitzperry]

I would be FURIOUS. Doesn't copyright laws prohibit something like that?

The creator of the poster is claiming fair use, which means the court will have to weigh the following factors:

1. the purpose and character of the allegedly infringing use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market

What happens from there is anyone's guess, I suppose. Seems to me that #3 weighs heavily in favor of the copyright holder. In fact, all of them favor the copyright holder, IMO. The funny thing is, I always thought that poster (in terms of the design) was a knock-off of some other work, but I've never been able to put my finger on it. But I had no idea the image was (allegedly) swiped.

And I'm with you Janet--I don't think adding a posterization effect should qualify as a transformative work. Gee, maybe I do a little photoshopping on some of Ansel Adams' work and see how much I can make.

 

[jann1033]

the real kicker with this is someone else posted a tutorial about how to do the poster in photoshop ,... and used a stolen stock photo to do the tutorial it was xed out in places so they didn't buy it to use in the tutorial.

 

[Chikabowa]

In this particular case, I would prosecute as far as the law would allow me to prosecute. That is plain theft. No if's, and's or but's. It's shameful.

 

[jann1033]

http://blog.cafepress.com/2009/02/09/the-copyright-and-the-copycat/
further developments...copier doesn't want "his" work copied from above link...
"Ironically, while Fairey is touting “fair use” one moment, another artist says he’s claiming copyright infringement the next. Baxter Orr claims to have received a Cease and Desist letter for his own Obama poster. Baxter claims he “wanted to parody the guy who parodies everything. He’s based his career off this. If he gets mad at this, he’s become just like Tide detergent or Coca-Cola.”

 

[pisco]

Regardless of whether or not Shepherd Fairey is a hypocrite, I think he has a better than decent shot at winning his case. I personally think that in hinges on the effect of the use on the potential market. The AP photographers photo is one of an unknown number of press pictures of the president (at this point I would guess that there are hundreds of thousands of him out there). So we have to consider how much of an actual market their existed for this particular, unremarkable, photo prior to Fairey's poster being created. My guess is that Fairey can make a successful case that he increased the market value of the AP photogs image.

As upset as I might be if the same thing happened to one of my pictures, I would have to admit that none of my images have a realistic commercial market at this point, and that a highly popular derivative work would very likely create value for my image. This is one of the central arguements of the free culture movement. The free flow of ideas and derivative works creates rather than destroys the value of the original work.

 

[iluvdisnee]

It has happened to me! And YES I was Furious and all He LL broke loose with the person selling MY work. I had a beautiful picture I had taken of my St. Bernard. At the time I was a member of a St. Bernard Forum and posted pictures frequently of my Saints.

Fast Fwd a year or so later I was looking at Ebay under "st. bernard" stuff for a gift for DH when lo and behold there was my picture under a listing "St. Bernard Christmas Cards". A woman in the UK had stolen my picture off of those forums and was using it to make cards, calendars, etc. Now grant you she wasnt getting rich by any means, but she still stole my picture.

I wrote her a not so nice email and she wrote me back asking me to PROVE that I was the owner of the picture. That was back when I had film converted to CD's so I still had hard copies as well as digital files of the picture so I heavily watermarked them at full res and sent them to her.

She apologized profusely, took down all the listings, and sent me a bunch of things printed with my dogs picture. I didnt press any charges but I did let it be known that what she was doing was WRONG!

So, I ty to watermark almost everything I put online or at the very least web size it so it can't be stolen.

 

[jann1033]

The creator of the poster is claiming fair use, which means the court will have to weigh the following factors:

1. the purpose and character of the allegedly infringing use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market

What happens from there is anyone's guess, I suppose. Seems to me that #3 weighs heavily in favor of the copyright holder. In fact, all of them favor the copyright holder, IMO. The funny thing is, I always thought that poster (in terms of the design) was a knock-off of some other work, but I've never been able to put my finger on it. But I had no idea the image was (allegedly) swiped.

And I'm with you Janet--I don't think adding a posterization effect should qualify as a transformative work. Gee, maybe I do a little photoshopping on some of Ansel Adams' work and see how much I can make.

let me know how that turns out for you

something else that surprises me is how many institutions don't seem to care how he got the photo
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/weekinreview/25kennedy.html?_r=1
"But as it turns out, there is more than one way into a museum for street art, the catchall term now used to describe a global explosion of public imagery that began with graffiti in the 1970s and has morphed into dozens of wildly different forms, generally united only by their illegal exhibition on public and private property. On Tuesday, as Barack Obama was being sworn into office, his portrait by the street artist Shepard Fairey — reproduced endlessly during the campaign until it became the defining image of the future president (it towered over a stage at one of the inaugural balls) — was on view at the National Portrait Gallery. A collaged poster of it had just entered the collection along with portraits by artists like Gilbert Stuart (George Washington), Norman Rockwell (Richard Nixon) and Elaine de Kooning (John Kennedy).

It is not Mr. Fairey’s maiden voyage into the museum world; a survey of his work opens next month at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and he is in a few other collections. "

for places that don't even let you take photos (sometimes) they seem pretty liberal with what they accept