Slashdot Mirror
Flickr Yanks Image of Obama As Joker
An anonymous reader writes "An interesting article yesterday about the unmasking of the recent creator of the controversial and iconic Obama/Joker image that has been popping up around Los Angeles with the word Socialism under it. The Los Angeles Times has identified the images' creator as Firas Alkhateeb. Even more interesting though is the fact that after getting over 20,000 hits on the image at Flickr, Flickr removed the image from Alkateeb's photostream, citing 'copyright' concerns. The image in question is clearly both an independent derivative work and unquestionably a parody of the President and Time Magazine which would be covered under fair use. It has appeared on many other sites without issue on the Internet." According to the same reader, "Flickr also recently nuked a user's entire photostream over negative comments on President Obama's official photostream."
Does freedom of speech mean anything anymore?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Seems Flikr's owners are Democrats; or maybe they're Republicans afraid of backlash. I wonder what they'd have done if they were there while Bush was in office if he had been similarly parodied? I know if it had happened to Bush, the neocons would have had pitchforks in hand.
I think Flikr's removal of the parody was in extremely poor taste. The picture's a joke, son. Grow a sense of humor! Seems to me a bit of political correctness gone even more crazy. Political correctness offends me almost as much as real censorship.
Also, I wonder if the Streisand Effect will hit?
Free Martian Whores!
Why is flicker taking this issue so seriously?
It is interesting that when Time did this very thing to a photo of Bush our unbiased main-stream media thought it was thought-provoking and no censorship or wrist-slapping was encouraged.
It's ok to have a picture of Bush as Hitler/Joker/Satan, but Obama is clearly off limits.
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
What I love is that the creator of the image, Firas Alkhateeb, has seen his work *cough* borrowed by the Republicans as an anti-Obama anti-Socialist campaign, but his actual intention with the image was to protest about Obama not being liberal enough. (And the fact that Alkhateeb is a Palestinian makes me smile, too.)
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
With pseudo free services such as Flickr, you have to abide by their terms of service. Expect them to err on the side of caution rather than risk litigation by large companies. My guess is they were more worried about Time magazine being referenced than the president. According to their terms of service: "You acknowledge that Yahoo! may or may not pre-screen Content, but that Yahoo! and its designees shall have the right (but not the obligation) in their sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse, or remove any Content that is available via the Yahoo! Services. Without limiting the foregoing, Yahoo! and its designees shall have the right to remove any Content that violates the TOS or is otherwise objectionable. You agree that you must evaluate, and bear all risks associated with, the use of any Content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such Content. In this regard, you acknowledge that you may not rely on any Content created by Yahoo! or submitted to Yahoo!, including without limitation information in Yahoo! Message Boards and in all other parts of the Yahoo! Services." Note the phrase "otherwise objectionable". Nice vague language to give themselves the right to remove just about anything. Even though the image was probably copyrighted, it might not have been removed if the rest of Time magazine cover had not also been reproduced. Some might argue that that was implying that Time some how shared the views of the poster (granted that is a bit of a stretch).
You have as much right to political trolling in Flicker as you do standing on a soapbox in your local mall.
You are allowed to troll so long as the management approves.
--
BMO
Unquestionably a parody of the President and Time Magazine which would be covered under fair use.
It's not "unquestionable" at all. First of all, the fact that it's a parody of the President does not make it fair use - to be fair use as a parody, something has to be a parody of the copyright work, not the subject of that work. Second, it's not at all obvious to me that this is a parody of Time Magazine. What feature of the Time cover is being parodied, exactly? It seems to me that the image in question is using the Time photograph to produce an unrelated piece of work commenting on the President. That's no more fair use than, say, sampling a record to produce a new track is fair use.
I think you could make a good case that this kind of transformative use of copyright material ought to be generally allowed, but it doesn't help that case to exaggerate the actual scope of fair-use rights to make derivative works.
I'm sure that the Obama administration has his info on file already through the http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/ website.
Isn't anyone else bothered ONE LITTLE BIT by the administration asking people to forward email rumors, etc., critical of the Obama or "the health care plan"? The site says "please don't forward names, etc." but they publicly ask that those things be forwarded. So if you have a slightly conspiracy minded friend, and you are one of the many recipients of his email, guess what - the Administration likely has your email address.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
My friend told me he saw a few of these and he was very upset. Not about the portrayl of Obama, but that they don't understand the Joker at all. Anarchy is more his flavour than Socialism.
From TFA:
Even more so, combining the accusation of Socialism with a depiction of Obama as the Joker makes no fucking sense. The Joker was about chaos and anarchy which is so far away from Socialism that the juxtaposition just strikes me as ludicrous. All it does is make the one who put the poster together look like an ignoramus. I can see the thought train-wreck now: "Lessee... Socialism is evil, and the Joker is evil, so the Joker equals Socialism!" Yeah, I doubt someone that bright even knows what they're accusing the president of. Other than that they're trying to tie him with "evil".
So take a clever image which the artist says wasn't intended as a political message (even though he criticizes Obama), add some moronic twat who thinks it's the perfect political message, and you get something that makes your average political cartoon look intelligent. It'd be like taking those stupid Bushies-In-Drag images, slapping haphazard labels on them like "Immigration Reform" or "Emperialism" and acting like you're a political genius.
The enemies of Democracy are
That poster doesn't even make sense. What has Obama got to do with the Joker? Nothing What has the Joker got to do with Socialism? Nothing. What does Obama have to do with Socialism? Nothing, by any reasonable definition of the term. It's as if someone just splattered their incoherent thoughts onto a page.
If by miracle my post is not drowned down into depths of oblivion, note that Dubya was depicted tens of times with very unflattering altered photos, and so was Cheney, while the W. administration was in power - and nobody complained.
See this or this, for example.
Also, while Mc Cain was campaigning, this rather shocking picture was publicized by The Atlantic - who later recanted and apologized - but the point is, nobody in the McCain camp complained, let alone did you have public and officers making a fuss about it.
But with Obama, the thought police is up in arms bigtime.
And they are right to be: Obama is sacred and he farts rainbows, and his words are words of wisdom, and he poops gold nuggets. And Obama won't speak up: it is the Will of the People that is against any criticism of the Beloved President.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Studies show the media is neither liberal nor conservative. While reporters are often more liberal than their readership, editors and owners are more conservative. What the media actually is, is pro-owning class, and lazy. When you claim the media is 'liberal' you do two things: you demonstrate that you do not understand what the word 'liberal' means, and that you subscribe to a simplistic view of the world where everything is black and white. Please try to grow up and see that things are more nuanced, the world is not black and white, there are no pure 'good guys' or 'bad guys,' and not everyone who disagrees with you is a monster, a fascist, a Nazi, or insane.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
We're still at war. Obama is a War President. If you are not with him, then you are with the terrorists. Any treasonous acts against the president must be quashed at all costs to preserve our freedom and the Cunstitution.
If it was good for W., then it's good for O. If you're going to whine about it, why did you think it was OK to give the President this power? Did you always think that the President would be a guy you approved of?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
They should have used a photo of Noam Chomsky instead?
But... Where would they find one of him without glasses?
And if they did - how would we know it was him?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Except that's not what the terms of services say. They don't just say "we do what they want". They state certain policies. None of which say "derivative works can be removed if we don't like them".
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
You're only allowed to use copyrighted characters and images that belong to the object of parody. This means that if you're mocking Disney, you can use Mickey Mouse, but you can't use Mickey Mouse to parody someone not associated with Disney.
It's counterintuitive, but it's exactly the way our legal system works. This is exactly the same thing that happened when Penny Arcade used Strawberry Shortcake to parody American McGee.
Of course, what's actually happening here is that the people who disagree with the parody are using the letter of the law to get it removed. Moral of the story: if you're going to piss people off make sure you dot your i's and cross your t's first.
If you've listened to any of Obama's speeches you'd KNOW he was The Riddler.
Ipernity *was* ok....but they've changed. I switched from Flickr to Ipernity.......but I finally killed my account with them because of their Mickey Mouse censorship rules. I know quite a few professional photographers who also left Flickr and moved to Ipernity.....and then left for the same reason.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Actually it would be good to know your race if you make such claims about Obama.
Not that it would not make you a racist, just need it to label you an Uncle Tom as well.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Let's assume that this is an "open and shut" fair use claim. So what? This will do absolutely nothing to stop you from being sued. The suit will cost you a ton of money or you will lose. Now, you might feel that is a great way to spend your money, but Flickr doesn't want to spend their money dealing with this. Flickr did nothing wrong here. They made a simple, obvious business decision. The problem here is our copyright laws, which give big corporations that can pay for expensive lawyers all the power.
Fair Use is pretty much dead.
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
I can't believe no one has pointed this out yet, but I think that the picture was perceived with excessive political correctness as being racist
Because Obama was portrayed in WHITEFACE
so I don't think it is at all about the characterization, but about whatever having a black man in whiteface implies
whatever -if this is the reason, then they are being hyper-sensitive and should grow a pair
-I'm just sayin
Have you been to America recently? Anybody who publicly bash The President will be met with iron fists from the righteous people.
Oh yeah, and the author was actually pro Obama. Yeah right. That's convenient, otherwise his life will become a living hell.
This is what your country has become to, and you can't be happier.
So... This is ok:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21244223@N04/2105170638/
and this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cocktailia/460463335/
and this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wgeis/11346587/
but not this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/3834570613/
Got it...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Parody is fine under copyright law.
It's not particularly clear the image is a parody. What is it mocking / poking fun at? If it's Obama, then the copyright problem you're dealing with is the use of the image of the Nolan/Ledger Joker. If it's the Joker... you're going to have to explain how exactly that's working here.
(If it's the concept of equating the current president with socialism or nihilistic anarchy, I think you may actually have a case)
Flickr has no problem with copyrighted images of Bush being photoshopped.
That may or may not be true, but this isn't a good direct comparison with which to asses that issue, partly for the reasons I mentioned above (the significant copyright issue likely isn't with the image of a public figure)... and partly because this image has a really high visibility right now.
If you want to make that point, you'll need a comparable image where of Bush (under copyright protections not mitigated by law about images about public figures) photoshopped with an image from a highly successful commercial work with the level of distribution that the Obama-Joker image is getting.
This isn't to say that there aren't some larger points about copyright protection vs speech that could be made, or that Flickr's true reason for removing the image is their given reason. Just that it's plausible.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
... is that he recognizes that Obama is a political ghost ("lacking substance") and that Dennis Kucinich should have been the Democratic (or at least SOME party's) nominee. The guy deserves some serious modding-up for that, regardless what people think of his Photoshopping skills or subject matter.
This. This. This. This.
Even if you don't think "information wants to be free" or think that DRM isn't all that bad, can we at least all agree that it's a ridiculously large loophole to suppress speech you don't like? Not only that but you're obligated to report copyright violations so you're being a good citizen by doing it; talk about doublethink.
Yeah, except that those photos of Bush on Flickr, they're all still up. Do you understand the distinction?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Change!
I may be braindead, or at least you may think so (Hey, eye of the beholder, etc), but I didn't "slap a fascism tag" on anything here.
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Anarchist Communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_communism
Anarchist communism advocates the abolition of the state, private property and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production,[1][2] direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations, workers' councils and/or a gift economy through which everyone will be free to satisfy their needs.
So perhaps an Anarchist Socialist is possible! :)