Fair Use: Turning Artists Into Outlaws.

UPDATE: Well, the premise of what I wrote remains true. But it turns out that Fairey lied about a lot of things.

Crooks & Liars alerts us to a USA Today report that the Associated Press is going after Shepard Fairey.

The photograph which formed the basis of Mr. Fairey’s iconic “Hope” poster used by the Obama presidential campaign was taken by free-lance photographer Mannie Garcia and is owned by the AP.

The AP thinks it should share in Mr. Fairey’s profits.

Campbell’s Soup never sued Andy Warhol for violation of fair use.

In a paper titled “Preserving Fair Use In The Digital Age,” Barry Steinhardt wrote:

Fair use has allowed artists of all types to enrich our culture with their views of the world around us. Consider the work of painters like Andy Warhol, who composed numerous works with such images as Campbell’s Soup cans and photographs of Marilyn Monroe — images that were protected under intellectual property laws.

Consider, too, the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who paid homage to musicians like Miles Davis by including lyrics to their (copyrighted) songs in his paintings. Without fair use, these artists might have been branded as outlaws.

Unfortunately, this specter of legal liability (through new ill-conceived intellectual property laws) may jeopardize the work of more recent artists, many of whom now use the digital domain as a medium for their creative endeavors.

Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol, 1962 (Synthetic polymer paint on canvas, each 20 × 16, in Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY)

I hope Mr. Fairey gets some backers to pay his lawyers because obviously the AP can afford to spend a lot. But I think Mr. Fairey could well win this one.

In Mr. Steinhardt’s paper, he indicates that:

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

“(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
“(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
“(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
“(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.”

Mr. Fairey’s use does not have any effect on “the potential market for or value of” the original photograph. As far as “amount and substantiality of the portion,” one would be hard pressed to recognize the original photograph in the artwork at all. I would be extremely surprised if anyone at the AP or Mannie Garcia even figured out without being told that the photo in question had been used. Without those two factors, it would seem to me that the AP’s claim lacks merit.

The USA Today story includes a side-by-side of Mr. Fairey’s “Hope” poster and the original photograph. Go look yourself.

Do you think the AP or Mannie Garcia have a legitimate beef?

I think the AP is just pissed because their mancrush John McCain lost the election.

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Icing on the cake!

"Woman Suffrage Birthday Cake" (circa 1916)

You know the dinner the Presidential Inaugural Committee gave tonight honoring Sen. John McCain?

Yeah, that one.

Sarah Palin was … err … harrumph … not invited.

When asked a week ago by Mother Jones whether Palin would be at the dinner, her spokesperson Bill McAllister said, “I don’t know if she was invited.”

Pretty hilarious, if you ask me.

I think Bill McAllister knows full well. He’s had to listen to her shriek about it since she found out.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the Palin household this weekend.

Mother Jones also reports that “Obama’s inaugural committee has declined to say whether an invitation was sent to Palin.”

Ooooooh! Snap!

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Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time there did in fact exist such a creature as a Progressive Republican.

Hi, there! keep off my stuff!

Cartoon shows Wisconsin Senator Robert M. La Follette calling angrily out the window to Nebraska Governor Charles W. Bryan. A sign reads “No Mobilization, La Follette, Cleveland, O., July 4, 1924.” La Follette was a firebrand Progressive who opposed conscription and advocated outlawing war. On July 4, 1924, he announced that he would run for president as an Independent. Bryan, the brother of William Jennings Bryan, was chosen to run for Vice President by the Democratic Party. He announced in August that he would refuse to cooperate with President Coolidge’s plan for Defense Day on September 12, a kind of symbolic mobilization day involving civilians as well as the National Guard. Berryman suggests that La Follette may resent what he deems is Bryan poaching on his territory.

Perhaps the Republicans, who, during the election campaign, were holding Teddy Roosevelt up as a paragon of Republican presidents, should revisit the Progressive (Republican) platform of 1912.

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A Merry GOP Christmas.

Portrait of Elsie Schuenemann at the wheel of the Christmas Ship, near the Clark Street Bridge on the Chicago River in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The boat carried Christmas trees to Chicago from Michigan. Her father, Captain H. Schuenemann, died when the Rouse Simmons, a ship carrying Christmas trees, sank in 1912.

Don’t be afraid, click through … you won’t get cooties.

(Photograph courtesy of The Library of Congress and the Chicago Daily News)

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John Ziegler: American Douche bag

[1/09/09:  Ziegler update here.]

I stumbled across the interview of John Ziegler by Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com regarding his “poll” of Obama supporters and their supposed knowledge of “major issues” that occurred during the campaign. After reading the interview transcript and looking through the poll results over on Zogby, I can only conclude that John Ziegler is an American Douche bag, a mendacious, dishonest, uninformed, and flat-out stupid douche bag.

Let us get this part out of the way right off the bat; John Ziegler, go fuck yourself!

His contention is that he tested Obama voters for their knowledge of “major issues” that occurred during the campaign. In reality it is a Republican Pop-Culture quiz, asking poorly conceived and in some cases false “questions”. The questions ranged from trivia (l): “Which candidate currently has a pregnant teenage daughter”, to the absurd/retarded: “Which candidate claimed to have campaigned in 57 states?”. Oh yes, those are both “major issues” which should be considered carefully when casting a presidential ballot! Just so you don’t think I’m cherry-picking to make Mr. Ziegler look like a fool (he needs NO help from me!), you can see the entire poll result here: Ziegler Election Test

I transcribed the poll result data to an Excel spreadsheet and the first thing that jumped out at me was that the population total for 7 of the 12 questions did NOT equal 512! I though that a professional polling organization such as Zogby should be able to execute a 12 question poll with a population size of 512 and come up with the same answer 12 times. I guessed wrong apparently. I don’t know what fancy-schmancy methods this big-time pollers use to add up columns of integers but it is clearly more sophisticated than the SUM function in Excel.

Moving on. I rescored the results using my own interpretation of the “correct” answer and came up with some not-so-surprising results.

First, the easy ones; question 202, which asked “Which candidate said that they could see Russia from their house?” Zieglers calculation was that 0% answered correctly, it was a trick question! That specific quote does actually belong to Tina Fey, but Ms. Palin made so many virtually identical statements from the stump that I’m going to give it to her! Such as when she said to Charlie Gibson “…you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.”

Question 205 queried, “Which candidate won their first election by getting all of their opponents kicked off the ballot?” Ziegler claimed a 17.4% correct (Obama) while in reality the survey shows (again, those NONE and NS guys again!) that 70.5% answered correctly! The truth is that his opponents managed to fail to get on the ballot by not acquiring enough valid signatures.

Question 209 concerned the Republican meme that “Obama wants to bankrupt the coal industry.” Yeesh! Such a question! Where does this clown get this material? Oh, Newsbusters.org, Michele Malkin, rightpundits.org and that pinnacle of thoughtful and accurate punditry, stoptheaclu.com! Zieglers result showed that 81% of respondents got that one right! Unfortunately, the correct answer was only gotten by 15% of respondents, again, NS and None.

One last example is question number 211, the final question in the survey (I guess they wanted to leave a certain “taste” in their mouthes) which was, “Which candidate started their political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground?”. I’m pleased to report that almost 53% answered None or NS while Ziegler howled at the fact that only 44% answered Obama!

This was a fun exercise, but it all leads back to one fact; John Ziegler is an American Douche bag!

On a related note, I wished he’d asked me for questions to add to his poll, I’d have given him some good ones, some of which are even based on FACTS!

Which candidate divorced his first wife after she suffered a debilitating accident?

Which candidate dated his 2^nd wife while still married to and living with his first wife?

Which candidate physically scuffled with a 92-year old Senator on the Senate floor?

Which candidate said “fuck you” to Sen. John Cornyn, called Sen. Pete Domenici an “asshole”, and referred to Sen. Charles Grassley as a “fucking jerk” (to his face)?

And some wingnutty style questions could include

Which candidate caused the deaths of 134 American Navy men in 1967?

Which candidate refuses to acknowledge involvement in a fatal drunk-driving incident in 1964?

Which candidate spent 5 ½ years in a communist camp chillin’ with his buds? (and how is it again that his captors figured out his father was an important admiral?)

Which candidate has shamelessly exploited his POW experience for political gain?

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