Susan M. Kornfield, J.D.skornfield@bodmanllp.com

I am one of those fortunate professors whose students are committed to her continuing education. My last two posts discussed the ridiculous assertion by the Associated Press that a painting of Barack Obama by Shepard Fairey (right image, below) infringed a photograph of Barack Obama in which the AP may or may not hold copyright (left, below) because of the “similarity” of the two images.

I offered the rather unremarkable observation that they JUST MIGHT look similar because THEY BOTH DEPICT THE FACE OF THE SAME MAN.” The non-legal way to say this might be “Duh.” Something for which you shouldn’t have to go to law school for 3 years and practice law for 27 to figure out.

And then two of my law students send me some great follow up material. En Hong sent a hilarious debate on The Colbert Report (where even the attorney taking the side of the AP can’t keep a straight face) and Nancy Sims sent me an article where the attorneys for Mr. Fairey are using principles of crowdsourcing to ask people to send photos of Barack Obama that look like the Barack Obama in the “AP” photo. And look what we find from Steve Jurvetson
:
Now, let’s juxtapose those images:

I am hoping that the Web and crowdsourcing become tools that start popping those ridiculous copyright infringement balloons that greedy monopolists try to float past judges and juries. Maybe Coldplay could use some help?

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