Last week, popular photo-sharing website Flickr removed a Photoshop-altered image of President Barack Obama from the creator's page, citing a violation of copyright law and, therefore, a violation of Flickrs terms of use.
College student Firas Alkhateeb "Jokerized" a portrait of Barack Obama, taken from an October 2006 Time Magazine cover, using Photoshop. After another person borrowed the image for a postering campaign in Los Angeles and the image began to get some attention, Flickr removed the image from its servers. According to an LA Times profile last week, Flickr contacted Alkhateeb to tell him that the image was removed because of "copyright-infringement concerns."
Flickr's actions have prompted much criticism, drawing cries of censorship from bloggers and newspaper editorialists alike.
The photograph of Obama is protected by copyright, but folks' objection to Flickr's action has centered on fair use. Fair use, as the Stanford Copyright and Fair Use Center's website explains, is"a copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials forpurposes of commentary and criticism." One significant exception to copyright law is that, under fair use, people can copy a portion of a protected work for the purpose of parody.
The authors of the pieces I've linked to within this post are in a much better position that I am to weigh in on the debate, but I'd recommend having a look at these summaries of parody cases compiled by Richard Stim and try to decide for yourself: was the Obama/Joker image copyright infringement or parody? Interesting stuff...
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