Richard Lacayo on the latest twist in the Shepard Fairey-AP lawsuit:
"By claiming to have forgotten at first which photo he had worked from, did Fairey undercut his case in his own suit against AP? Fairey argues that he transformed the original image sufficiently to qualify for fair use protection .... But if the transformative process didn't leave enough of an impression on him for him to recall what picture he was working from, how transformative could it be? How long did it actually take? A few minutes? A few days? Surely if you work with a photo for a few days you remember it. But if the changes you made to the image only took a few easily forgotten minutes, or even an hour, then does that really qualify as a transformation?"
