I recently came back from San Francisco and LA, where I had an interesting conversation on copyrights and the characteristics of a genuine piece of art.
It started with the fact that Shepard Fairey who created the iconic “Hope” picture of Obama has been sued by Mannie Garcia, the photographer who took the original picture and won (the case is not settled, though).
This reminded me of the (more confidential) work of Andy Baio, who revisited Miles Davis in 8 bit : Kind of Bloop. Strangely enough, he was sued not for the music, but for the album cover which was considered to be too close to the original photograph !
