Flickr Obama/Joker Takedown Story Gets... Odd
from the so-what-happened? dept
We were a bit confused over the claim recently that Flickr (Yahoo) had taken down a Photoshopped image of Obama as "the Joker" superimposed on a Time Magazine cover. It didn't make much sense, because it wasn't clear who's copyright was even at issue. It didn't seem likely that Time Magazine would have any claim, even though that's what many assumed. So, some folks started asking around -- and all of the "obvious" candidates said no. Time Magazine, DC Comics and the original photographer who took the image on which the photo was based all insisted they didn't send the takedown. That resulted in some fingerpointing at Flickr, but some more digging by Thomas Hawk turned up a guy named Edward Przydzial (though Yahoo's takedown notification called him Przydzia, which resulted in even more confusion initially. But, no one seems to know who he is and what copyright he might hold in the matter, making the whole story quite bizarre. Hawk contacted Przydzial, who responded claiming that he created the image... but also that he doesn't own the image, and refused to say whether or not he filed the DMCA notice (and some bizarre stuff about needing a court order to find out who filed the DMCA notice). Once again, this highlights some of the inanities of the whole DMCA takedown process.Filed Under: copyright, fair use, flickr, joker, obama
Companies: yahoo
