Obama graffiti artist arrested in Boston

[gategrrl]

The graffitti artist who spread Barack Obama's image with a reinterpretation of an AP photographer's portrait photo has been arrested in Boston. Shepard Fairey was on his way to his gallery opening (presumably on Newberry Street) when Boston's Finest arrested him for supposedly graffitti-ing up a few walls, and marking it with an Andre the Giant tag. He was not arrested for the Obama portait (at least directly).

Apparently the photographer, Manny Garcia, didn't copyright the image; and AP seems to not understand the transformative aspects of painting from a photograph. If this were a true problem, Andy Warhol would have been arrested soon after his Campbell Soup cans were hung on a wall. And there goes much pop art into the copyright infringement argument that's currently going on.

Comments

[sars.livejournal.com]

As I understand it you are infringing copyright if you do work based on someone else's work. The only way he could have used that particular image was if it was under creative commons or he had permission from the original photographer. As for the photographer not copyrighting the image, don't you guys have automatic copyright on all works?

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

According to Wikipedia, it's not that clear cut.

Artists have been recycling and quoting and remaking other artist's images for centuries.

In this case, the image went from a photograph to a painted image with very few color tones to it: it is not an exact copy. I doubt AP or the photographer has a leg to stand on. Or not much of one.

[sars.livejournal.com]

We must have quite different copyright laws to you guys. We have to own or have permission to use someone else's work.