Obey Giant Page #8

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they were going

after Shepard.

I was arrested

based on the fact

that there were

some posters

and stickers

around Boston.

And, in fact, most of

the charges against me

were for stickers,

but they didn't--

they didn't

care about that.

They wanted to charge

me felony charges

for every single

poster and sticker

that they could find.

My understanding is

that Detective Kelly

was taking out

new charges.

He would literally

walk around town

and see a sticker

and take out

a new felony charge.

The felony charges

carried a potential

of two and a half

years per charge.

So, 32 charges adds up

to something

like 83 years,

potentially,

in prison.

So, all of a sudden,

I went from having my

first museum solo show

about to open,

the inauguration

and all the hoopla

for--around the Obama poster

that came with that.

My original art

piece of Obama

going into the

National Portrait Gallery,

the Smithsonian,

to I'm arrested in Boston

and then a couple

of days later

the Associated Press

called the office

to say, you know,

you used our photograph

for the "Hope" poster

and we want to see all

of your financial records

on the image.

The image by

artist Shepard Fairey

became an unofficial emblem

of this Barack Obama campaign.

And this is a 2006

Associated Press photo.

The AP says that

required permission.

They were very aggressive.

They said, "If

there was any money

made from it,

we want it."

Now because I'd

given all the money

back to the campaign

or invested in making posters,

that wasn't gonna be possible.

So there were some

lawyers that said,

"We're not gonna let

them do that to you,

we wanna take on your case."

I was sent on an assignment

to photograph George Clooney

who was visiting

Washington, D. C.

I found an image of Obama

and George Clooney side by side

at a Darfur conference

but it was a small,

low-resolution image.

I liked the way Obama

was looking up in that image,

so I continued to search

and I found a better

resolution crop-in

just on Obama.

I get a phone call

from a colleague of mine

named Tom Gralish,

he's at

The Philadelphia Inquirer.

He said, "Man, you know,

this is a big deal.

The Obama photograph,

it's yours,

I can prove it."

I felt good.

I was like, "Damn.

Dang, this is really cool."

When we made our counter

to the AP's claims

for copyright infringement,

we said, "I think

what I did is fair use,

but if you disagree,

I'm a reasonable person,

I would be willing to pay

the $300 licensing fee."

I was concerned about

the attitude that was taken

by Shepard Fairey

and his attitude

was very bold.

"Yes, I took this image.

Yes, I changed this image.

I did something transformative

to this image

and I have no legal

responsibility to the AP."

And that was his position.

The photographer who took

the picture of Barack Obama

at the center

of a lawsuit

now wants to join

the court case.

Anthony Falzone,

with Stanford University's

Fair Use Project,

says there's no

infringement here.

At a minimum, fair use

protects Shepard's right

to do what he did.

I think that there

can be creativity

even within elements

of recycling,

and I absolutely

think that there's--

it has democratized

this process

in a way that's

incredibly powerful

for people who were

frequently powerless before,

and I couldn't be

happier about it.

It was brave.

But it was also

very, uh...

It was the start

of something bad.

I had been seen

putting a sticker up

by an off-duty policeman

who then, once the case

became so high-profile,

came forward and said,

"Yeah, you know,

I saw that guy.

I told him to climb

back up on that pole

and peel the sticker down,"

which I did.

And then there was

another spot

where there's

a boarded up window

where there was a poster

and it was fairly elaborate,

so they basically negotiated

with my lawyer and said,

"If he admits those two things

and accepts them

as misdemeanors,

and pays a fine,

then we'll let it go,

we'll let that be

the resolution."

Two misdemeanors,

you know, it's

a pretty minor deal

compared to 32 felonies.

Big, big, big difference.

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

I'm just glad to be

putting it behind me.

You know, I'd like

to continue making art

and move forward

with my career.

I'm just happy to, you know,

to be getting through this.

Even though Boston,

the criminal charges

were resolved by

the end of the summer

which was several months

after they were initiated,

keep in mind that I was

still dealing with

this back and forth

with The Associated Press

and now the AP's saying

that I'm trying to lie

about which

photograph I used.

There was a lot of clamor

about the image

was actually one

where George Clooney is in

the left side of the frame,

but there was no question,

it was never

that image, never,

and I don't know why the--

how the dialogue started,

who started it, or why.

When the lawsuit started

and my lawyers asked me,

"What photo did you use?"

I said, "I used

a cropped version

of this photo of Obama

and George Clooney."

Good afternoon

and welcome to

the National Press Club.

And what it

turned out was that

the cropped version

was zoomed in and shot

a couple seconds later

by the same photographer

but it wasn't just a cropped

version of the other photo.

I did not realize

that at the time

and I had never done,

you know, an overlay

or a comparison.

Why does it matter so much

which specific photo?

Because if you look here,

there's the photo

upon which it was based,

and the other one

with George Clooney in it.

You know, what's

the big difference?

It looks almost identical.

It really does

and some copyright lawyers

would argue it

really doesn't matter

which photo Fairey used,

but The Associated Press

says it matters a lot.

Bad news atmospherically

for Fairey.

Yeah.

Dealing with

the case in Boston

was incredibly stressful.

I was barely

keeping it together.

I was on the verge of a

nervous breakdown from that.

And then, to add the AP

lawsuit on top of that

and then realizing I'd made

a mistake about the image,

so what I did was I made

things way worse for myself

by just not saying

anything about it

and sticking to

my original story

that, "Oh, you know,

it was based on the cropping

of that photograph."

I didn't acknowledge

to my lawyers,

I didn't acknowledge

to Amanda,

I didn't acknowledge

to anyone that I'd been mistaken

and that I didn't even realize

there were two photos.

The other thing is

I just felt stupid,

so I tried to just

keep that a secret

and I deleted files

on my computer.

I remember the day

he told me,

he said to me,

he said, you know,

"I need to talk to you,"

and it was such a weird

"I need to talk to you"

that I thought,

"You're either dying,

you've had an affair."

And he said,

"You gotta sit down."

So I'm like, "No, no,

I'm not sitting down.

What, tell me while

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