Judge Rules Shepard Fairey Can Get New Lawyer; New York Times, 11/10/09

Melena Ryzik, New York Times; Judge Rules Shepard Fairey Can Get New Lawyer:

"The street artist Shepard Fairey has won the right to a new lawyer in his ongoing suit against The Associated Press over the image that became his celebrated Barack Obama “Hope” poster. In a pretrial hearing, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein also allowed that lawyers for The A.P. can depose Mr. Fairey and his outgoing lawyers before the end of the year, The A.P. reported. The agency and the artist are countersuing each other over the rights to the image, a photo taken in April 2006 at an event at the National Press Club in Washington. Mr. Fairey recently admitted that he had lied publicly and to his own lawyers about which image he had used, which caused them to abandon his case.

He later added that he still believed that his work fell under fair-use guidelines and did not infringe on the A.P.’s copyright, a claim which his new lawyer, Geoffrey Stewart, supported, and that the agency refuted."

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/judge-rules-shepard-fairey-can-get-new-lawyer/?scp=1&sq=fairey&st=cse

IPod: Gift 'Fit For A Queen' Might Violate Copyright Law, Online Media Daily, 4/6/09

Via Online Media Daily; IPod: Gift 'Fit For A Queen' Might Violate Copyright Law:

"This week, President Barack Obama gave the Queen of England an iPod preloaded with 40 tracks from Broadway shows. Did doing so violate the copyright law?

Fred von Lohmann at the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the answer might be yes...

Lohmann's point isn't that Obama is potentially a scofflaw, but that the law needs to be changed. As he put it: "You know your copyright laws are broken when there is no easy answer to this question."

Law professor Eric Goldman at Santa Clara University agreed. "It's a neat little question. Can you give a gift of an iPod preloaded with music," he told Online Media Daily. "The answer should be, 'Of course he can.' The fact that it's cloudy at all is, I think, really damning about the state of copyright law.""

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=103489

Associated Press Files Countersuit Over Obama Poster, The New York Times, 3/11/09

Via The New York Times: Associated Press Files Countersuit Over Obama Poster:

"The Associated Press has filed a countersuit against the artist Shepard Fairey, who created the famous “Hope” poster of Barack Obama, The A.P. said in a statement."

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/associated-press-files-countersuit-over-obama-poster/

Obama Administration Claims Copyright Treaty Involves State Secrets?!?, TechDirt, 3/13/09

Via TechDirt: Obama Administration Claims Copyright Treaty Involves State Secrets?!?:

"Plenty of folks are quite concerned about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations are being negotiated in secret. This is a treaty that (from the documents that have leaked so far) is quite troubling. It likely will effectively require various countries, including the US, to update copyright laws in a draconian manner. Furthermore, the negotiators have met with entertainment industry representatives multiple times, and there are indications that those representatives have contributed language and ideas to the treaty. But, the public? The folks actually impacted by all of this? We've been kept in the dark, despite repeated requests for more information. So far, the response from the government had been "sorry, we always negotiate these things in secret, so we'll keep doing so...

Can the US Trade Representative please describe the damage to national security if the public gets to see what's being proposed that would require governments around the country to enact significantly more draconian intellectual property laws?"

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090313/1456154113.shtml

Mannie Garcia: The Photo That Sparked 'Hope', Fresh Air with Terry Gross, 2/26/09

Via Fresh Air with Terry Gross: Podcast [10 min. 58 sec.] and Show Summary for "Mannie Garcia: The Photo That Sparked 'Hope':

"In April 2006, Associated Press photographer Mannie Garcia took a batch of photos of then-Sen. Barack Obama at a National Press Club discussion about the crisis in Darfur. One of those photographs later became the basis for Shepard Fairey's iconic "Hope" poster, an image that came to be intimately associated with Obama's campaign."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101184444

Shepard Fairey: Inspiration Or Infringement?, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, 2/26/09

Via Fresh Air with Terry Gross: Podcast [25 min. 34 sec.] and Show Summary for "Shepard Fairey: Inspiration Or Infringement?":

"The Associated Press has threatened to sue the artist who created the iconic "Hope" poster of Barack Obama for copyright infringement, but Shepard Fairey says his work is protected under the principle of "Fair Use," which exempts artists and others from some copyright restrictions, under certain circumstances.

Fairey based his poster on an April 2006 photo of Obama taken by AP photographer Mannie Garcia."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101182453

Obama Administration Mulls Constitutionality of Copyright Act, Wired, 2/19/09

Via Wired, Obama Administration Mulls Constitutionality of Copyright Act:

"In a few weeks, we'll likely know the Obama administration's position on whether it supports hefty monetary awards in file sharing litigation brought by the Recording Industry Association of America.

The Bush administration's position was clear. It supported the Copyright Act's penalties of up to $150,000 per infringed song.

"Congress acted reasonably in crafting the current incarnation by ensuring that it serves both a compensatory and deterrent purpose. Congress established a damages range that provides compensation for copyright owners in a regime in which actual damages are hard to quantify," the Bush administration wrote in 2007...

The minimum penalty under the Copyright Act equals a ratio of about 750 times the actual injury, assuming the value of a single music track costs $1 to purchase. Rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts say financial punishments exceeding a 9-to-1 ratio are unconstitutional."

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/obama-administr.html

Senior figures call for Obama to name chief technology officer, The Guardian, 1/2/09

Via The Guardian: Senior figures call for Obama to name chief technology officer:

"The role of CTO remains one of the last senior posts unaddressed by Obama's transition team, despite announcements about the candidates for high-profile roles in science, energy and communications. Indeed, it is not even clear at the moment whether it will be a cabinet-level position or an advisory role.

According to the ObamaCTO.org website – which lets people vote on the topics they think Obama's technology team should look at first – the topics a successor should address include internet access, privacy and online copyright. Among the site's most popular demands are a repeal of the Patriot Act of 2001 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/02/obama-technology-cerf

Copyright and Politics Don’t Mix - New York Times, OP-ED, 10/20/08

Copyright and Politics Don’t Mix: OP-ED by Lawrence Lessig

"It would be far better if copyright law were narrowed to those contexts in which it serves its essential creative function — encouraging innovation and ensuring that artists get paid for their work — and left alone the battles of what criticisms candidates for office, and their supporters, are allowed to make."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/opinion/21lessig.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin