Legal Commentary

Crowd-sourcing a "fair use" case

By Lawrence Lessig

As mentioned, the Fair Use Project at Stanford's CIS is representing Shepard Fairey in his suit against the AP. To that end, we'd be grateful for some net-based knowledge. How many photos are there "like" the beautiful photograph that Mannie Garcia took (the one on the left; the one on the right is a CC licensed photo taken by Steve Jurvetson)? Can you send any examples to shep_use@pobox.com?

Also, please send any favorite examples of photos used as visual references for other works of art. We lawyers don't know much, but we can learn pretty quickly.

Thanks for any help.

Full post as published by Lessig Blog on February 17, 2009 (boomark / email).