Sometimes a picture can be worth a thousand....or more.

AP

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-29/obama-hope-artist-fairey-may-plead-the-fifth-in-ap-lawsuit.html

This week a Manhattan judge announced that there is currently a criminal investigation going on involving Shepard Fairey and his wife Amanda – who are accused of one of the most well known copyright cases of 2009. Fairey may be invoking his 5^th amendment rights not to answer legal questions as this investigation is under way.

This case involves a work of art that can be seen in the homes, streets, and apparel of Americans across the country and throughout the rest of the world. The image is a patriotic stenciled drawing of Barack Obama, and it became a symbol of “hope” and “change” throughout his presidential campaign. Fairey created the famous poster image, and it currently hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. The problem is that the Associated Press claims that Fairey took the original image (taken by an AP photographer) from them without permission, and used it to create his poster. Fairey is under fire not only for that, but for also providing false evidence in court to mislead them on where he obtained this image from.

This case really interests me because I worked in the online photography news industry for a year, where I gained rights and clearances to use AP photos every day. My company had a subscription with AP, and we could browse their site and download the photos we wanted. Our subscription was EXTREMELY expensive. Newspapers pay a lot of money to use agency images and I don’t think many people realize this. One might wonder, why would this cost so much, it’s just a photo? The bottom line is that the photographers who shot these pictures worked hard and they deserve compensation. People grab images from the web all the time to use on their blogs and websites, and they often don’t have permission. This is a recurring problem for photographers today because everything they do is on the web. But if you are using someone’s image to make money, you need to compensate the person who provided the photographic work. It’s the same as stealing music online. It happens all the time, even though it’s illegal. But if you are going to make millions, like this guy did, you should probably consider getting permission; it will save you millions in the end. These people will come after you, and I would not mess with the AP.