Fairey Desperate

The Shepard Fairey v. AP soap opera has just gotten a bit more ridiculous, all thanks to Mr. Fairey. According to Techdirt:

Fairey has filed new counterclaims against the AP, including that the AP used the photo of Fairey’s poster without getting a license. He also lists out a number of other images of artwork that the AP did not get a license to use, but which it uses within photos[.]

Where to start? Assuming Fairey has actual copyright ownership over the Obama “hope” poster image, it would be extremely difficult to contend that the AP does not have a valid “fair use” argument for using that same image to describe the ongoing lawsuit and cultural property issues raised by the lawsuit, both of which are clearly “newsworthy.”

One senses a desparate attempt by the Fairey team to get out of this legal swampland they created for themselves, and now quite possibly for other artists.