Did Flickr Takedown Obama Joker Time Cover Over Copyright Infringement?
A bunch of folks have been sending in this story about Flickr supposedly taking down the “Obama Joker” Time Magazine cover that’s been in the news lately, but I have to admit that I’m confused about the reasoning behind the takedown. There are questions of whether it’s just “censorship,” but I’m trying to figure out what’s the actual copyright claim. The suggestion is that the concern is from Time Magazine, which doesn’t like its brand associated with the falsified cover — but wouldn’t that be a trademark issue, rather than a copyright one? If there’s any copyright issue at all, it would potentially (and then, weakly) be from whoever owns the rights to the original photo that was changed. But seeing as there’s still an ongoing battle in the Shepard Fairey case to determine if that sort of thing is fair use and I haven’t seen anyone identify the original Obama photo that was used here, it’s not even clear who would be crying copyright infringement. So… where exactly is the copyright
