Friends Don't Let Friends Link to the AP

__AP Photo__________"Hope" Poster

For a while now, I have been boycotting the Associated Press, because they established a policy to threaten legal action over copyright for people who link to them and quote a sentence or two.

With one notable exception,^* I have avoided their stories, and used Google News to find an alternate when I found a story of theirs.

Well, the Associated Press moron brigade is at it again, with their suing Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the Obama "Hope" poster, because he based the poster on an AP Photo.

As you can see, it's not a tracing, it's based on a photo, and clearly fair use. The author took the expression, and you can find dozens of pictures with a similar expression, and little else from the photograph, and what's more, it appears that the AP may not even have right to the photograph, as the photographer, a stringer named Mannie Garcia, never signed a contract with the AP:

2) Where you either an employee, or a freelance photographer, as defined by their contract, for the AP when you took this image?

I was a temporary hire, filling in for a staffer at the AP. It is my understanding that I was neither a freelancer nor a staffer, but rather a temporary hire. I have never been an AP staff employee, and no, I have never signed an AP contract.

3) So, you own the copyright to the image?

The ownership of the copyright is in dispute, as per the AP. It is my understanding that since I was not a staffer, and was not a freelancer, and did not sign any contract, that I am the owner of the copyright, but I am in discussions with the AP over this issue.

Needless to say, I will continue not linking to Associated Press stories, and using a Google^® News search to find alternates.

^*When via typo, they referred to Joe Lieberman as the 2000 Vice Presidential pRick.