ISO50

Frank don’t be an idiot.

This is an extremely interesting and important topic to me more from a moral perspective than a professional one.

Admittedly I’ve used photography as a source for quite a few corporate identities and iconography I’ve designed in my time. Although this is where it gets seriously tricky, if you take it from a purely technical standpoint, we know that exactly 0% of the original photograph is present in that final output, and that is the point I would stand my argument on.

I don’t believe noting the slight differences between the two make a case at all, the artwork — no doubts — still used the photograph as reference.

So, in my humble opinion, I don’t believe Shepard Fairey should be punished because I don’t think what he did was wrong. But, in saying that, as said above — as a matter of etiquette — some credit should have been given to the photographer.

I honestly don’t have a clue how Fairey can state he didn’t make money selling off signed copies, I definitely he wasn’t doing himself any favours by stating that. But that is irrelevant to me anyways.

Isn’t this debate a little old? Guess everyone needs to dust off their art history books and re-read the Pop art movement…

Yes Jared we must never debate anything debated before.

it’s tough, you have to take into consideration that many people want to discredit shepard’s work…it’s definitely not the first time someone has publicly tried to cut him down. and why now? this image has been seen the world over since the primaries.

it’s not to say that people shouldn’t be given credit for their work, that would be a ridiculous notion. and i agree with scott, i don’t see how shepard didn’t make something off of this whole campaign but i am also willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when he says he did not. regardless, i think a good solution in this situation is for shepard to publicly give credit to the photographer of the original image and then move on.

as for the question of what constitutes enough of a differentiation, you have to take into consideration the context of how the work is presented, and in this case i think the source and shepard’s image are worlds apart. hopefully the legal heads can talk enough technicality to argue that the image was sufficiently modified, but ultimately i think we can see the artist’s honest intent.

James, if you want to debate, learn how first.

Here’s a start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Koons

This is on of the strongest legal precedents that makes it appear Shepherd may lose. I hope he doesn’t. Do you have any legal battles to share?

Personally the image is a great bit of iconography and it is an important emblem of our past election cycle for the entire world. Further the fundamental reason it is so effective is THE DESIGN. You post just the photo, it’s a good photo, but it’s just a photo and easy to get lost in the noise. You can say the design is textbook, it’s just vectorized, it’s just whatever, it’s just Shepard Fairey’s work that made it a powerful piece of Propaganda. Now here is where everything else is going to get hamstrung, It’s a public domain image and I really think the AP is going to have a hell of a time trying to make this case.
Rogers v. Koons is an easier case to understand because of the clear EXACT reuse of the source media and the clearly noted and high price that the sculpture was sold for. Also the flimsiness of the defense resting on parody and the Koons own admissions of plagarism are going what ultimately hamstrung him.
Personally I don’t think we need to be so gung ho about stringing people up over this stuff. I sincerely hope that Shepard wins and we can start restoring a bit more sanity to our increasingly convoluted and muddled copyright policies.

I had a run-in with Fairey’s people a while back when I sent him an email asking if it was ok to make some posters for my company loosely based on some of his posters (just to hang on the walls of the office, not to sell). I was redoing the art (fist shape) from scratch, tracing some of the elements, tweaking them, adding other elements, changing the colors, etc in order to bring the work within what I considered to be fairuse.

I got an mail back from the Obey legal dept. telling me that NO, I wasn’t allowed to do it and that they would send lawyers after me if I did do it.

—
Unfortunately we cannot allow you to use our illustration. The reason
is because the illustration you want to used was used as a logo for our
clothing company which also is used on our tee shirts and there are
some copyright and trademark issues for the usage. We are flattered but
we would not feel comfortable with it, plus we own all copyrights and
trademarks internationally for all of Shepard’s illustrations and
graphic design work. Thanks for asking!
—

So I guess what goes around, comes around. I don’t agree with the AP, but at the same time I’m a little pissed off that Fairey is trying to take the high road now that it’s convenient for him, especially when he claims that he didn’t make money off it, which he obviously did by getting huge exposure and selling more of his work.

exposure isnt the same as making money off of a single piece…..
i think the ap is looking around seeing most of their publishers disappearing and going “is there anyone around that we can sue for a large sum of cash? oh defining art is a hard thing to do, lets go after that!” at that point, a few men in expensive suits got out of their eames executive chairs and decided to sue an artist for making thought provoking art. i hope fairey beats the shit out of them, possibly making a precedent for any artist to do whatever they please, using the world around them to create a new piece.

most staff photographers used to be artists and now seem to be digital monkeys, leaving much to be desired when it comes to composition, content. look through the google/life catalog to see what i mean…

“does vecotrizing and coloring an image go far enough to differentiate the artistic product from the source?”

Scott,

You’re missing the point. Sheppard may have vectored the image, but he didn’t ask for permission.

He’s been getting away with plagiarism for years:
http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

So I think it’s about time that somebody confronted him. He got what he deserved.

By the way, your post made me wonder which images of children and birds you vectored for your Obama poster. What were the original images? Just curious.

did andy warhol ever get sued by campbells? im not drawing exact parallels here but come on, if this image wasn’t so successful, the AP wouldn’t care one bit, they just want a piece of his action. sad.

Well I’ve always thought that Shepard Fairey was wrong for not divulging credit for the originals of his artwork…see this post as everyone else has posted as well http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm.

That being said, I do believe IN THIS CASE that it’s a far enough adaptation that it is legal..if it were me I’d still give credit where credit is due…but what’s the rule, they always say 10 – 30% difference means no plagerism, not that there is an exact equation but in most cases I’d say that’s true. But who am I?

I agree with most of the other readers that Fairey should give credit where it’s due for etiquette and for prosperity.

What is the difference between vectorizing an image from a photograph and say painting a canvas from a photo?

Fairey really is a plagiarist, and a hack. I think the fact that he’s as successful as he is is testament to the cannibalistic nature of our culture. If Fairey wasn’t a “designer” he’d be a movie studio exec picking through the ashes of the past 30 years of film trying to find a movie to “reimagine”. I actually never liked his work, even before I found out that some of his most iconic images where stolen whole hog from others’ work. The work is all dated NYC street attitude and psuedo-revolutionary crap. He’s essentially taken the aesthetic and iconography of socialism and made a killing off of it. Capitalism for you.

keith, i respectfully disagree. art can be different from design. if this was a site rebranding or something i would agree, but art can and should be whatever the artist/society wants it to be, free of all restrictions, legal and moral included. the same cant be said for design, where it needs to meet the standards of what is considered best for a entity. (business, individual, label, etc). fairey is an artist, not a creative director or graphic designer.

p.s. i see that we are kind of neighbors.. i work down on state st.

I think the artist should have sought permission to use the image, and the photographer should have been given credit. Had my own photograph been used by another designer in this way, and they made a ton of money from my image, I would be a little bent about it.

And regarding the point about the image being modified… well, yes, the image was certainly modified, but it wasn’t really changed all that much. Despite the new colors and the vectorization, he just about literally traced the original photo without much change at all. It’s a perfect match. To me, this is stealing. It would have been so easy to simply ask for permission. Stupid.

This case is very interesting, I hope that it never goes to court because my gut feeling is that whatever decision would be made would be wrong, and it would set a negative precedent regardless of which way the verdict turned out. We’ll end up without any protection for our own work, or we’ll have to pay a royalty to every thing we ever include in our own work.

As for the Associated Press, I think they have a good argument. Technically, Fairey’s work is a reproduction of the photo. It is customized with color, but it is essentially a reproduction. I’m guessing it isn’t that easy to get close up picture of Presidential Candidates. As a business based on getting photos of current events and building a library of photos of the now popular President, the AP wants to protect their investment. The gallery that represents Fairey seemed to be concerned about it, and even contacted the photographer and identified the source for their exhibit.

My guess is that this will get settled out of court, Fairey, or the Obama campaign will end up paying some kind of licensing fee or royalties on duplication of the images and that will be that. If it does go to court.

The best part of this whole thing, however, is that the photo was shot during a lunch where Obama was sitting next to George Clooney.

There’s some good legal commentary on The Art Law Blog: http://bit.ly/crQo

Fact of the matter is, without this photograph there would have been no”iconic” HOPE poster…or he simply would have found another photographer’s image to trace. That is not originality. It is not an original piece. He took someone else’s work without permission.

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt when he says that he did not make any money directly off the image, but you know he’s made a large sum of money simply as a result of all the press he’s received (more people buying his prints, paying to see his shows featuring the Obama image, selling Obey clothing, etc.)…

Just cuz he didn’t make money off of it, doesn’t make what he did right. When you want to use someone else’s work, you don’t just take it without saying a word. What part of his fucked-up plagiarising brain doesn’t get this?

No matter how talented Shep is, I personally have no respect for him and OBEY if he’s the type of artist who thinks he can take people’s work and remain quiet about it.

Fairey didn’t use the image IN the poster, he used it as a REFERENCE to make a completely different image. The photo isn’t manipulated, distorted, or appears as any part of the final image. I think it’s wrong to demand compensation from an artist for using your image only as a reference. For using the actual image in the final piece, sure…sue all you like, those pixels belong to you. But if the pixels aren’t yours, don’t get all fussy.

Opinion:
If you change the image so that no piece of the new one could be confused for the original, i think that cannot be copy write infringement. Fairey did not just colorize or run a filter on the image, he redrew it.

It’s funny how Fairey gets a pass because he’s seen as an underground street art dude. What if it were the other way around? How about if another clothing brand took a photograph from Scott’s blog, traced it and put it on t-shirts without permission? You would all be up in arms.

Anyone defending Fairey is basically saying that artists shouldn’t have any copyright protection at all. What if the photographer is not an Obama supporter? If I were a professional photographer who took a picture of McCain, and his campaign traced the image, and paired it with a message that I found offensive, I would be pissed!

Fair use.

Andy Warhol painted a Brillo box and the original graphic artist he copied never made a dime. That’s because he created a package design and Warhol created an “Art” piece.

We’re a sample an remix culture. Sheperd probably made a boat load of money on it but that’s because his poster hit a public nerve that the photograph never did. The AP is bottom feeding on this to make some money. The photographer deserves credit, a “Thank You for the inspiration” and that’s it.

I used to really like Shepard. But the more I get to know the guy, the less I appreciate his work. I’m all for being inspired by others but when you’re of Shepard’s status and can find the exact source to a lot of his “original” work… I feel a bit cheated.

I do think the photographer should receive acknowledgment but I don’t think Shepard should be sued. Give credit where credit is blatantly due that’s all.

if anyone is making money off of these its DC street hustlers

Yes! I think NAVIS nails exactly how I feel. Legally speaking, I imagine what Fairey has done is okay. However, while he may be well within his legal rights, I think his ethics are severely challenged, i.e. nonexistent. I find it disgusting that he’s based his entire (very lucrative) career on directly ripping of other artists with nary a peep towards crediting those artists. The occasional “inspriation” or sample is one thing, but it’s so pervasive throughout his “art” that it’s almost a joke. I don’t think he’s a criminal, he’s just a dick.

I think Fairey is safe. I can imagine at some point Obama stepping in, or his campaign managers. I doubt they’ll let it slide and let the person responsible for Obama’s image be martyred.

AP better watch out, otherwise they going to witness Obama step through their front doors and agents cascading from behind him.

“Yeah, about that… you’re an enemy of the state”

Breaking News: A mysterious fire broke out…

– This would be a completely different argument if the photographer who actually took the photo was suing shep. He’s not.

The AP is. the original photog does not even work for them anymore.

this is about money, not art. that photographer isn’t going to see a dime of the money if the AP wins this case. What are the chances of the people at AP who pushed this case being designers themselves? not likely. they smell a buck.

First of all, Im amazed that Fairey didn’t hire a photographer for this project. I mean it was for the, then, democratic presidential candidate and all.

And second, this is NOT the first time Fairey has been accused of plagiarism. There’s an entire article here:

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/Obey/index.htm

which is dedicated to calling out Shepard Fairey as a plagiarist. Theres several examples in that article that are just inexcusable; he literally took this illustration from an old cuban poster, didn’t change a thing, slapped his logo on it and put it on a t-shirt. We have all stolen images before, but Fairey takes it to a whole new level.

I used to be a fan of Fairey. But after a while it just gets old. All of his work is very similar. Almost always uses the same color scheme and aesthetic for everything he does. He’s become a celebrity artist and many people seem to buy into his fraud. But I for one am over it.

“This would be a completely different argument if the photographer who actually took the photo was suing shep. He’s not.”

That’s totally irrelevant. The copyright was either infringed or it wasn’t. If the copyright doesn’t hold for the AP, then it’s certainly not going to hold for you and I either.

“What are the damages?”

The licensing fees that Fairey should have paid the photographer? I guess they could have negotiated a reasonable one time fee, but if Fairey loses, I would imagine they’re going to have to calculate the damages based on the highest probable per-copy royalty or something. I guess they would base it on the AP’s standard syndication prices.

“Where’s the intent?”

Huh? Fairey accidentally picked this image of Obama and accidentally traced it?

“Without a doubt, though the composition is copied, the image is at least 30% different than the source of influence.”

I’m no lawyer but I’ve always been under the impression that “changing something x%” is just a B.S. graphic designer fantasy. Legally, if something is recognizable, they can sue. That’s the standard for music sampling for example. Even the smallest snippet needs to be licensed no matter how much you slow it down, play it backwards, etc.

“While it’s certainly earned Shepard mass media attention, did he profit directly from use of the ‘art’?”

Yes, clearly. Posters were sold. T-shirts were sold. For cash money. Just because he (supposedly) gave all of it away to the Obama campaign doesn’t get him off the hook!

I dont think he deserves to be sued

I’m really disillusioned with Fairey. I used to think he was about something, that his art made a brilliant, modern and necessary statement about the cheap forms of persuasion in advertising. And how it plays upon our herd instincts, tricking us emotionally into making decisions rather than appealing to our intellect. He was tweaking “Dear Leader” iconography used in dictatorships, and drawing a line from that to our omnipresent advertising campaigns. He was saying, or at least I thought he was saying, that it’s dangerous to communicate this way and that its a medium of control. And I thought it went without saying that it’s super loaded and dangerous to use a political leader’s face in that way.

And then he completely undercuts that message and does the Obama ad. Everybody thinks propaganda is okay when it’s their guy. I’ve listened to the interviews since with Fairey, hoping to hear a decent explanation. And more and more I’m convinced there’s nothing there with that guy – or rather that is art isn’t as deep or subversive as he lets people think it is. The Obama ad creeps me out for the same reasons that murals of the Ayatollah do.

Having said that, I have mixed feelings about the fair use question. Fairey has definitely profited from the Obama ad. If he was in it for the cause, and not his career, he would have use real street artist techniques and remained anonymous. As it is, he’s on a full-blown self-promotional campaign.

However, I don’t see where the photographer’s creativity is represented in his graphic. Let me explain. Let’s say that Fairey had been watching Obama on CSPAN and taped it on his DVR. Then say he did a freeze frame of Obama and composed his graphic from that still. I doubt that anybody would be worked up over the fact that he appropriated CSPAN’s video camera operator. And that’s because CSPAN video coverage is generally considered to be transparent, and is not about composition. If Fairey had worked from a screen grab of video, the only form of expression he’d be copying would be the one on Obama’s face. And that is what I think has happened with the AP piece. What makes a photograph original is its composition, not the subject. Once Fairey manipulated the photograph to the degree he did, nothing remained except for Obama’s expression. I don’t think it’s fair to say that the AP photographer owns the rights to Obama’s expression in perpetuity. The same would not be the same if, say, Annie Leibovitz, had gotten Obama in a room and prepared an environment, and posed her subject in such a way, that the photo she ended up with was as if she had sculpted the material in front of her lens to create something from her own mind.

Think of iconic composed portraits. John Lennon on the NY roof, for instance. That photo was a one of a kind, and if you vectorized it, you’d still see the composition and the work of the photographer. But in the case of a political figure on the campaign trail, the candidate is being shot sometimes by dozens of camerapeople at the same time. What if the AP photo had been shot by a handful of different cameras at the same time, all capturing the same expression, the same backdrop? Would that change the issue. This brings us to the issue of why the AP is suing and not the photographer. It’s as if the AP is acknowledging that it’s not the composition that is exclusive, but the fact that the AP published it first.

This blog rules. Look at the general decency (even when arguing) and thoughtfulness going on.

BEAUTIFUL response, Scott!

“And then he completely undercuts that message and does the Obama ad.”

For me, he undercut his message as soon as he started a clothing company and became a corporate advertiser himself. It even changed the context of his early “Andre the giant has a posse” stickers to suddenly being just some kind of long term, guerilla marketing buildup for an eventual brand launch.

As for the tracing issue, I think there’s some kind of pirate code or honor among thieves that we follow: i.e. steal from non-artists. Legally, it’s all wrong but if I need to trace a bird for example, I’m going to try to find some snapshot that an amateur took which happens to have a bird in the background. I’m certainly not going to use a pro photograph of a bird from a stock photo site where another creative artist is trying to sell their work.

>>> BREAKING NEWS <<<

Fairey got arrested last night:

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/18662913/detail.html

I am a copyright attorney who specializes in art law and has worked with cultural appropriator artist, Negativland, on fair use issues in the past. A lot of people are posting wildly misinformed statements here, but the law and facts are, I believe, quite clear here. Fairey has a good fair use defense, but his image was commercial and he undeinably profitted from his use of an image that he knowingly and willfully stole off the Internet. This is illegal and he will very, very likely lose if this ever goes to court. My guess is that the parties will settle, primarily because Fairey does not want to get tagged with the reputation as being a hack thief. That said, I love his work and support his efforts. Bottom line: create your own work and don’t steal from others.

“Fairey has a good fair use defense,”

I don’t get the fair use angle. Doesn’t fair use usually have to be a parody or for educational purposes? Which is why the Negativland thing was so outrageous, since their work was obviously a parody, but I don’t see how he could argue that about the Obama poster!

I thought the media was on Obamas’ side!
Whats the deal? haha
Apparently the photographer didn’t mind SF using the photo, but when the AP found out it was game time. Shepard threatens legal action when someone modifies his images (Baxter Orr) so why didn’t he ask permission to modify Mannie Garcia’s image?
Shepard’s poster for Obama is well done and I don’t want him to serve time, but consider and respect your resources…please!

This case is a great opportunity to educate ourselves in the failures of copyright law. There seems to be plenty of agreement on the fair use claim by Shepard. But what still nags many is the lack of credit to the original photographer. Copyright law ignores the fact that plagiarism and illegal copying are separate things. Hence there is no punishment for plagiarism per se. If I buy a painting outright and then I sell it claiming authorship, there is no copyright violation. We do have laws against Slander because damage to reputations damage people themselves, in this case there was a small damage done to the reputation of the photographer. But current law does not provide relief since it ONLY cares about copyrights.

Here is a link that opened my eyes to how copyright law is outdated and also manipulated by corporations to their benefit: http://www.questioncopyright.org/

@daniel. You’ve brought up a point that I was thinking about after my initial comment I posted here and I feel it’s really valid too. The fact the original photograph was editorial and not creative, which I think makes a fundamental difference. The only problem with that is, people can lie, and people have varied degrees of creativity. I’ve seen people take photos that they truly think was quite creative, but in my eyes was incredibly bland and straightforward. And it’s that opinion based judgment that doesn’t translate so well into a law. The lines are blurred.

With regards to the whole system challenging ethos of Shepard, I think we’ve got to give him space and realise that perhaps it was just an identity and not a way of life.

@Matt.

Likewise, especially the Ver Sacrum – Koloman Moser 1901 piece. Which was like an exact trace of a previous artwork, a previous artwork. That in particular scared me a lot about Shepard’s work and is something I definitely don’t think is cool in any way. Source’s and references are cool, but when you’re copying an existing creative work and composition, you’re basically just a monkey with a good eye for design. Although, don’t hear what I am not saying, Shepard definitely has skill.

the two are so different its hard to tell it was the image he used. his head looks much more angled in the original photo. if any money was made he definitely owes the photographer a portion. how i hate money.

Also, I think the subject of the image needs to be considered. Obama is a public figure, so the idea of ownership here (possibly why the AP is fighting this battle and not the photographer) is one of access, not art. It’s a paparazzi ethic – the value being defended is a kind of exclusivity.

On the flip side, imagine that we were talking about one of those photographers who travels deep into rural areas, say in Appalachia or the American Southwest, and photographs “real” people, people of the land, capturing all of their wrinkles and wryness in metallic-looking film stock. That’s still a question of access, in a way. They did the work to capture the image, like hunting game. But more composition is involved here, and there is more artistry to selecting this kind of subject than there is in snapping shots of celebrities. In the first, the artist is deciding that the subject is interesting and worth presenting. In the second, we already think the subject is interesting and that’s what motivated the photograph.

tough one. it’s a great image, and, like fairey or not, he did a decent job promoting an image of ‘change’, which we were so in bloody need of. the off-kilter red white and blue was a nice touch. knowing this image was going to be on such a large-scale, visually, on the world stage, it would have behooved him to contact the photographer, (not AP) and considered this a collaboration, all in the spirit of the campaign’s message. personally, i’m not too enthusiastic about grabbing images off the web and using as reference in my illos. but they are altered significantly, and are usually minor pieces of reference material. that said, i recently had the overwhelming desire to do some portraits of musicians in a sort of ‘a scanner darkly’ style, and had no choice. ideally, i would love to shoot the artists myself, then illustrate, being the purist that i am.

in retrospect, i think fairey went about this all wrong. he should have either a) ‘collaborated’ with the photog ny at least acknowledging him/her or b) arranged with the obama camp to shoot the candidate himself. fairey’s name, reputation, and guerilla-style street art and street creds would have gotten him in the door.

if he didn’t make a dime, leave him be. if he did, he should share the wealth w/ the photographer…

Isn´t posting photographs of other people in your blog (or any other blog for this matter) kind of the same thing?
Do you ask all the authors for permisson?
Just a question…

Man, that’s buhhhhllllshit. If he drew it with a pencil on a piece of paper, no one would’ve said anything. Whether you like Shep. Fairey or not, you can’t knock his hustle. I think it’s so telling of the times how people are scrambling for cash.

It’s sad, really. The AP gets enough attention. I bet a lawyer is behind all this.
I work as an artdirector for a alternative weekly, and I know that our artists would be guilty as hell if this thing goes through.

by night, I’m a musician. Take any of your favorite producers, Madlib for example. If he got pinched for every sample he touched, he’d be nonexistent. There is something to be said for people that can successfully append/appropriate something as nondescript as that photo.

Scroll down and see what a hack this guy is:
http://www.thegiant.org/wiki/index.php/Josef_M%C3%BCller-Brockmann

2nd post on this topic but just had to interject one more time…

@matt
thanks for that post, i dont agree with all of what it says but jesus, i’d never done that much research into his work and that really gets to me that he has outright appropriated that much work from others…

of course that all plays into your 300 design level course in college about appropriation and “what is art” blah blah blah…

unfortunately its an argument that will never be fully resolved and the advent of digital media (since warhols time) only makes the hairs to be split even finer…

@scott
just incase you read all your comments ;) maybe an opportunity for a post about your own creative process on image usage in your own work…i know you touched on it in your response post but i would at least be interested in what your own process is in your work…i feel you are off the “major media” radar enough to get away with things like “image appropriation” yet in a position where as a professional you still need to clear things legally first…along the way im sure everyone has stolen SOMETHING for use in their design work, even though most dont do so for money, might make for an interesting topic

milton glaser’s thoughts on his work was (as usual) very thought provoking…
http://www.printmag.com/design_articles/MiltonGlaseronShepardFairey/tabid/492/Default.aspx

(see what i did there? i appropriated someone else’s post, let the berating begin!!)

all i know is that the more i research his work, the less i respect him as a designer…essh, its a slippery slope and something tells me that 10 years from now, the same debates that i had in history of design class about paula scher, peter saville, and andy w, will then include warhol…
there may never be a definitive answer but it will always make for some interesting debates on the subject

The first time I saw that Obama picture, it looked like it was based on a photograph. I just assumed whoever shot the photo would know about the poster. But seeing all this, I’m not surprised the Fairey guy is in hot water. Without the photographer (or his agent) knowing in advance (permission or collaboration etc), Fairey is effectively presenting it as his own work and letting people who see it assume that. That pisses me off, as I’ve had it done to myself as well. Having been on the receiving end of that I am very aware of producing stuff I know I can’t say is an “original” vision, and I am prepared to credit the influences. I’m not going to try and find justifications or say “everybody does it” to try and get around it. You may get this wrong, as an artist or designer, but that doesn’t mean you can’t realise why it might piss someone off and get it right.

Fairey’s style of work would seem to be more of a “genre”, graphic designs based off other images. So long as you know that’s what you’re looking at, fine. Otherwise he is stealing credit as well as the ideas.

I agree with PeeVee Esq: “Bottom line: create your own work and don’t steal from others.”

To me, it seems pretty clear that, like him or not, and like it or not, the HOPE poster falls squarely into fair use.

Why are artists so LAZY that they can produce art work with their own hands? Shepard Fairey’s public domain argument is just juvenile. Have we sunk so low that we not only call him an artist but a “visionary”

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