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Intellectual Property law Blog
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Political Satire or Copyright Infringement?
08-18-2009 [Ben Hanrahan] [Permalink]A 20 year-old college student, Firas Alkhateeb, downloaded the October 23rd Time Magazine cover of Barack Obama, and using Adobe Photoshop, manipulated the image to resemble the Joker from "Batman." He then uploaded the image to Flickr, a photo-sharing web-site.
It wasn't long until another individual found Alkhateeb's image and manipulated it further, removing the reference to "TIME" and captioning the image with the word "Socalism." The "Socialism" image was then distributed in hard copy around Los Angeles, and further printed on T-shirts and bumper stickers, which were, presumably, sold for profit.
The original Time Magazine cover, and both manipulated images can be found below:
As political satire and fair use, Alkhateeb, the student who created the first manipulated image, likely has a good defense to claims of copyright infringement, should Time Magazine or DC Comics ever choose to pursue an action.
Does the individual who created and sold the "Socialism" image have the same defense? What about for an action brought by Alkhateeb?
Click here for a "Los Angeles Times" article regarding the above.