Everyone has probably seen and/or heard about this in the news: Shepard Fairey being sued by the AP for using their photo for his Obama/Hope poster. Now, Fairey is suing AP because he doesn't want to pay for using their photo without permission. Meanwhile, the photographer, Mannie Garcia, says he owns the rights to the photo.
We talk about this all the time. What do you think of all this? Who owns the rights? Should Fairey's work be considered its own thing without the photo? How/when is it OK to use photos for illustration/art without having to worry about copyright permission? Or is it ever OK?
Fairey turned it into an illustration, so I don't see why he would have to pay for the rights. Now I think he should at least cite the AP and the photographer as sources for the photo illustration, but since he took his own spin on it, I think its okay in this case. But this is a unique case. Most of the time the designer should ask for permission to use the photo.
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