Obey Giant Page #9

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I'm standing up."

Like, seriously.

I'm like, "I am not

sitting down."

And he tells me, he goes on

to tell me what happened.

And then later on when I

realized there was no--

if I went into

a deposition,

I would have to

lie under oath,

then I came forward

to my attorneys.

I was like, "Why the

hell did you do that?

Why did you do that?"

It was irrelevant as

to which photo it was."

And he said, "It's because

I swore it was the other photo."

Anything that could

be used against me,

to me, was, you know,

very threatening,

not just in terms

of a lawsuit

about potentially money,

but about my freedom.

Simple as that.

So it was heartbreaking for me

because I knew that he

didn't need to do that.

But he was not well from that.

He was upset.

You know, it's the first time

that I felt so overwhelmed

that I did something

really cowardly.

I just did everything I could

to avoid dealing with it.

And me, I'm just

sitting there like,

"If you would have

just told me,

if you would have

just told me that this--

that this came up,

I could have...

I could have gotten

you through that."

That was one of

the roughest points,

I think, in our

relationship together.

But I would have never

let him go down that road.

There's just no way.

Like, I would have, like,

thrown him under the bus

to save him.

Where we went

from there was that,

"You gotta come clean.

You gotta talk to

the lawyers about it."

The conversation

with my attorneys

was, I could tell,

very frustrating for them

and, of course, it was

very emotional for me.

They just said,

"Why didn't you tell us sooner?

The merits of your case

were strong either photo,

it didn't matter which

photo you worked from.

You would have probably

won the case either way.

But now what you've done is

you've cast the entire case

in a bad light

because you look

like a bad person,

and that is going to

taint the proceeding.

We can't move

forward with you,

we have to drop

you as a client."

A Los Angeles-based artist,

Shepard Fairey,

has acknowledged that

an Associated Press photo,

seen here on the left,

was the basis for his image

of Obama on the right.

Mr. Fairey pleaded guilty

in a New York

federal court yesterday

to destroying

and fabricating documents

during a legal battle

with The Associated Press.

Fairey could face

six months in prison.

He's gonna be sentenced

coming up in July.

Once I heard the facts

of the dispute,

it seemed to me

an opportunity

to clarify the

appropriate latitude

that appropriation

artists should enjoy

when making use of

copyrighted materials,

in particular

copyrighted photographs.

So I initially got

involved in the case

out of a matter of principle.

I believe in the

principle of fair use

and for artists to have

the right to create

new images that

are transformative

based on preexisting images.

It's been part of art-making

since art-making started.

My message to any artist

is if you wanna use something,

and you think you want to

use it to promote your work,

great.

Have the respect

towards your

professional colleague

to ask.

That's it.

That photo, without

what Shepard did to it,

was not iconic,

by anyone's stretch

of the imagination.

He made it iconic, okay?

You have to give the artist

some credit for that.

Now if he went to go

sell t-shirts from it,

and it was like a movie star,

that's a situation

that has to be

dealt with financially

for the photographer

no matter how dime-a-dozen

the photograph is.

But the freedom to use

an image of a political figure

in order to express an idea

or to protest something,

that makes a big difference.

There was probably a line

of photographers up front

snapping pictures

all with long lenses,

very impersonal.

Hello!

Freedom of speech is a really

important thing in this country

and Shepard saw something

in that particular photograph

and thought,

"This could be something."

Fairey says he didn't

violate copyright laws

because his use of the image

should be considered

fair use under the law.

The AP alleges that Fairey's

image directly copies

all the striking

elements of the photo

and adds nothing

substantial to it.

News gathering itself

really would be under threat

if anybody could copy

whatever they liked

and make whatever use

they pleased of it

without paying.

The Associated Press was

demanding an amount of money

that would have

bankrupted Shepard.

Considering that to

license a photograph

is, at the very most,

a few thousand dollars

and they were asking

for millions of dollars.

The AP wanted to make

a very serious case,

precedent, that you steal

or you take from the AP

and the long arms of the AP

will come back to get you.

The Associated Press is wealthy

and well-represented by lawyers.

So they have the

resources to press hard

over a long period of time,

which Shepard did not.

Shepard and Amanda

were being drained.

It was a dark time for me.

It was very, very, very

stressful and depressing.

I could just see this, like,

overwhelming cloud over him.

However, we have children

and he's a wonderful father

and he really, you know,

he was still there,

he was still Dad.

The girls are number one.

If anything, I almost felt

like he felt more at peace

just being with them.

Madeline was one year old.

Vivienne was three.

Amanda was really stressed out

just being a mom

and dealing with all of it.

It would have been

very different

if it were just me.

This is tape number one,

volume five

of the videotape deposition

of Mr. Shepard Fairey.

That was one of the most

stressful things for me

was having to go through that

because in a deposition,

if you don't give them

the answer that they want,

they then ask it

five more times

in a slightly different way

and they tried to

make it seem like

there were malicious

aspects to everything

and there really wasn't.

Um...

I thought I did, yes.

The Associated Press

were brutal on him.

They were absolutely brutal.

They were going to crucify him

at a level that

I really didn't understand.

(clears throat)

Have you had a chance

to look at the transcript?

Yes, I did.

Where in there

do you tell Ms. Gross

it was wrong for Mr. Fairey

to use your photograph?

I didn't say that.

Okay, let's take a break.

It was time to take

a break for lunch

and I said,

"Hey, hey, Shepard,

do you wanna go get some lunch?"

And the suits were just

totally freaking out.

We looked at our

lawyers and we said,

"We are going to lunch,

see you later."

When I had lunch

with Mannie Garcia,

I explained to him that,

"I respect photographers,

I collaborate with

photographers all the time.

I also side with people

who feel like they're,

you know, under the boot

of a corporation.

And I think that you and I

are definitely

more like each other

than we are like

the people from the AP."

Shepard extended his hand to me

and he apologized.

And he said, "I should have

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