The Street Artist Who Won’t Quit: The Story Of Shepard Fairey

Fairey Gets Sued For Copyright Infringement

The poster was an instant success and Fairey sold hundreds of them on the street after they were printed. Not surprisingly, though, the poster’s popularity caused Fairey to come under more legal trouble. “The image was created from a news photograph from a 2006 panel on Darfur that Obama attended, so it didn’t have anything to do with the campaign. I feel like what I did was both aesthetically and conceptually transformative. I think it’s fair use, but the Associated Press think it’s copyright infringement, and they’re really going after me. It would bankrupt me entirely if they won, so I’m hoping, for the sake of creative expression and political speech, that that doesn’t happen,” Fairey said in 2010.