Hosted By:
co-chair MFA Design, School of Visual Arts/columnist, The New York Times Book Review
Aug 30
2010
Shepard Fairey is being sued by the AP for misappropriation of a photograph, which he used in a poster promoting candidate Obama. The suit alleges that rights for the image, which was taken by an AP photographer, should have been cleared first and that the pose struck by Mr. Obama is distinct to this image. This raises the question of precisely when a photo of a public individual becomes public property that can be used by all versus "intellectual property" that is protected by a copyright.
What are the legal and ethical lines in the sand with regard to intellectual property and images? In your experience, what is appropriate appropriation?
Angela gave the final word
There’s always been a very fine line between inspiration and plagiarism. If collage, sampling, and mashups that blend snippets and scraps from several different sources without fear of retribution are the way of the future, there is little motivation for artists, photographers and writers to create original content in the first place. The ability to recycle content will collapse if there is nothing left to scavenge.
Wednesday, September 1 at 10:25am
Angela Riechers
writer and graphic designer
0
Angela gave the Final Word
As long ago as 1876, Mark Twain ranted about the problems of securing copyright to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: “What a son-of-a-bitch of a law the present law against book-piracy is. I believe it was framed by an idiot, & passed by a Congress of muttonheads.” The digital environment has only increased opportunities to lift someone else’s work and claim it as your own with very little risk of getting caught. Right now, content ownership on all levels is a free-for-all, a brawl spilling out of the bar and onto the sidewalk with no one stepping forward to break it up and restore order.
Earlier this year, seventeen-year-old German author Helene Hegemann’s reaction to the public scandal over her debut novel Axolotl Roadkill, which was found to have entire pages lifted from multiple sources without attribution, was basically a giant shrug. “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity,” said Ms. Hegemann in a statement released by her publisher.
There’s always been a very fine line between inspiration and plagiarism. If collage, sampling, and mashups that blend snippets and scraps from several different sources without fear of retribution are the way of the future, there is little motivation for artists, photographers and writers to create original content in the first place. The ability to recycle content will collapse if there is nothing left to scavenge.
Wednesday, September 1 at 10:25am