Shepard Fairey Lied About Source of HOPE Poster

Apparently Shepard Fairey lied to his lawyers about which photo of Barack Obama formed the basis for his iconic HOPE poster. (source) The sad thing is, it shouldn’t matter. The poster is clearly seems like fair use.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 10:30 am and is filed under copyright, fair use. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to Shepard Fairey Lied About Source of HOPE Poster

  1. Jay says:
    October 19, 2009 at 9:10 am

    Isn’t it clearly a derivative work? I’m no copyright expert, but it seems much less a “fair use” than “The Wind Done Gone” or “Ice Ice Baby”.

  2. marcorandazza says:
    October 19, 2009 at 9:42 am

    It might be… you may be right.

    Now, Wind Done Gone was considered to be Fair Use, but Ice Ice Baby was not. The question here is whether he took too much and whether he made a transformative use of the original work.

    I guess that my statement is a bit uneducated, as I’m presuming a lot of facts about how he made the work.

  3. Norman says:
    October 21, 2009 at 9:55 am

    The Phantom Street Artist has said:
    People will one day speak of a Future Day and Time when a coined term will come from the voice of the streets. The term will be a definitive colloquial called Fairey Use TM to mean when an artist out of disrespect betrays important historical and revolutionary cultures, languages and authors to advance his own selfish interest in greed and mammon. This is called Fairey Use TM when an artist steals from other artists, cultural references and fails to give proper credit then tampers with federal evidence then hides behind important movements like the creative commons and attempts to escape justice under interpretative legal defense.

    In a sentence:

    Mommy is that artist pulling a Fairey Use?

  4. Norman says:
    October 21, 2009 at 9:58 am

    The Phantom Street Artist has said…
    Always give credit where credit is due
    but that is something Shepard Fairey will never do
    …
    You lie and you steal! What did you expect?
    You’re not from the varrio homie, you’re a fuckin’ red-neck

    From my peoples’ struggles and pains, you do partake
    Not from personal experience but for the profits you make

    My mama always told me “every dog has his day”
    And yours dear Sir is not too far away…

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