This was a very interesting article and I have been thinking about this kind of thing recently lately because of my senior project. For my senior project, I have used a lot of stock images from adobe. I have however purchased a license to use them or obtained images that were royalty-free. I have altered them a lot as to fit my general concept, so much so that it completely altered the meaning of the original photo. When you have a major project like this, using stock images, you can focus more on the concept and not the technicality of the drawing. However, the question comes to mind. How much of it is yours? And that’s how this relates to Shepard Fairey’s copyright case where he used someone else’s image to make something out of it that suited his own vision.
While I don’t agree he should have sabotaged any of the evidence against him, I believe the photo was changed enough that it had no resemblance to the original source. The cropping was different, the colors were different, the context was different as well. I do think some amount of credit needs to go to the original source, however, in this case, it was also used in a way that was not out to make a profit, though he did through the company Obey Clothing, it was for a cause he believed in, so I certainly don’t believe the original creator of the Obama photograph should get any substantial amount of money. Credit in some regard, yes. Perhaps the ability to use the image themselves was a good choice.
Recently I went to an adobe portfolio review for CityTech students and when they were reviewing my work I had some images from my previous semesters that weren’t completely mine. Some aspects of them, but I should have been more aware of not using too much of the original material. The person reviewing my work said I should watch out for that as we should be more respectful of other people’s work. I completely agree with them. I did change the photo, but it was not enough to call it completely mine. In the future, I want to be as original as I can be and try hard to create everything myself. I am more aware of these kinds of things now and this article was interesting in that regard to the Fairy case.