Artist behind Barack Obama’s iconic Hope poster pleads guilty in case with the Associated Press
Shepard Fairey, skateboarder and a renowned artist, is facing stiff punishment after pleading guilty in the criminal contempt case that followed his Barack Obama “HOPE” poster.
The whole issue had initiated after the 42-year-old Fairey had used a picture of Obama to design a poster that had become quite iconic during his presidential campaign in 2008. The Associated Press accused the Los Angeles-based skater-c*m-artist for copyright infringement for using their photo in his poster without their approval.
Instead of admitting his mistake, Fairey went on to counter-sue the Associated Press. Firmly standing his ground, he presented a handful of evidences in court to justify the use of the picture in question and convince the judges that fair-use laws protected him. He insisted that the Obama poster was an original work of art under the law of copyright and that allegation that the Associated Press was making on him completely baseless.
The case went on for a while until the two parties settled the matter outside of court. Fairey admitted that he had tried to cheat the court in 2009 by fabricating evidence and destroying some documents which were crucial to the case to convince the court that he had used a different image in his poster in order to tip the scales in his favour.
These revelations led to a criminal investigation of what was initially a civil offence. The investigations completed after Fairey pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
"I was ashamed that I had done these things, and I knew I should have corrected my actions," Fairey said on Friday.
Fairey went on to admit to Magistrate Judge Frank Maas that he during the making of the Obama posted, he was under the impression that he was using a cropped version of America’s current President’s photograph that he had seen of the former Illinois senator standing with the Hollywood actor George Clooney at a public event.
It conceded that he had only realised his mistake a few days after he had filed the law-suit against the Associated Press. However, he deleted the files that he had used to make that poster from his computer and edit the photograph to make it look like he was telling the truth.
The skater-c*m-artist is likely to be sentenced to six months in jail, along with a stiff fine which may be somewhere around $5,000.
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