oBAMA AS A jOKER MEANS HE IS "SELLING OUT" AMERICA !

i DON'T KNOW IS IT TRUE...BUT "oBAMA DEPICTION" aLEX jONES(YOUTUBE) MOVIE IS QUITE CONVINCING..
oBAMA IS NOT SELF ASURED AS OTHER POLITICIANS..MAYBE IT'S GOOD, BUT i'M AFFRAID HE IS OK GUY BUT NOT STRONG ENOUGH FOR POLITICS(LOBBY/FINANCIAL ELITE)

IS HE HIPOCRITE? ..HE IS FORCING CAFE REGULATIONS FOR CARS AND HE OWNES CHRYSLER 300 hemi (AND NOW HE'S GOT ECO-CADILLAC LIMOUSINE :)..
CARS WIL BECOME SMALL, UGLY AND UN-AFFORDABLE !

That being, there are plenty of publicly available photos of Obama that he could have used as a basis for the image. He chose not to use a public domain image. Instead, he chose to use a copyrighted one. Someone reported it, who knows who, Flickr looked into it, found that it was, indeed, a copyrighted image (and a violation of their terms of use), they took it down. DMCA provision or no, it was well within their rights to take it down.

Free speech grants Alkhateeb the right to create the image (and court any copyright issues). But Flickr and Yahoo are not public services. Like it or not, they are businesses. They are under no obligation to help any of us express our right to free speech.

We might not like how copyright laws are enforced, but we should work to change those laws rather than crying "censorship" just to drive more traffic to a blog post and further feed the partisan divide in the US.

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a safe harbor for web sites, like Flickr, that have user generated content. To fall within the safe harbor, Yahoo! (Flickr) must comply with certain requirements. It sounds like the company's actions are intended so it may continue to fall within the safe harbor provision. In other words, copyright disputes are often a case of he said, she said. The law provides companies a very convenient way to decide -- follow the rules/process provided in the safe harbor.

Moreover, those DMCA safe harbor provisions provide a very clear process to follow. Whoever filed the claim against the photo declared under penalty of perjury that they are the copyright owner. Yahoo has little choice once a complaint is filed that meets the DMCA safe harbor provisions, as provided in Yahoo's copyright reporting procedures. http://info.yahoo.com/copyright/us/details.html

It is now up to Firas Alkhateeb, as the Flickr member, to counter claim or work something out with the alleged copyright owner. As this is parody, transformative of the original work, and apparently for non-commercial purposes he likely has an extremely good case for fair use. I hope a copyright attorney agrees to represent him pro bono in this case. Otherwise, he's not likely to bother filing a counter claim. Hint, hint to copyright lawyers in the crowd. Perhaps Time will then lift its complaint if he agrees to remove its trademarks.

As far as I know, suits regarding censorship primarily refer to incidents of silencing by or within a public/governmental entity. It seems that, except for in cases of explicit discrimination, private entities can set whatever rules they want.

Hence, Fox News.

Registered trademarks have huge value to the owners of the trademarks ... Time's logo is one of the most valuable trademarks in the magazine industry.

Having its trademark used in anyway without its approval is a serious violation of the company's rights ...

The poster does it's job just fine without the Time logo - It's equally as disturbing as the "1984" invoking "hope" posters.

In a case like this, however, simply copy the'M' in TIME and replace the 'T' in TIME with another 'M' and then it'll be parody. Easy fix. MIME would fit nicely.

And I find the image slightly disturbing, too, if only because of that grimace. Nothing to do with politics or where I stand on Obama or anything else. If you don't find a rictus like that disturbing at all, chances are good you are already disturbed.

What bothers me is that there are 10 million people in this country who believe there really is a Joker and it must be Obama, the Nazi terrorist from Kenya. Political satire must be protected. There is, however, no excuse for stupidity.

I don't approve any sort of censorship nor do I think Copyright law is perfect but this can easily be a case of Copyright Infringement. Free Speech is weakened when used through symbols and images. The Court divides the actual message from the means of producing it. To permit it, both must be legal (so you may have a perfectly legal message conducted in an illegal way in which the Court will prohibit the conduct). In terms of Copyrights it is Fair Use to use a popular character to criticize said character (or its parent company). There is a case where, if I remember correctly, someone used a popular animated character to portray Uncle Sam in order to carry out a political message. The Court found that he wasn't protected by the Fair Use defense since he wasn't parodying the character but was instead using it to mock, comment or criticize something else. It's very plausible the same thing is happening here. The author is using the traits of a popular character (the Joker) and the template of a Time magazine without criticizing or commenting on either of them. In the sense that the author is neither commenting on The Joker or Time Magazine he's infringing those copyrights. I don't agree with this, but as far as I remember it's the law today.

Also fair use is a complicated defense which is applied on a case by case basis. There isn't a bright-line rule to apply it. The same can be said of the limits of free speech. if you produce something that is transformative, and not derivative, then it's fair use." is a very simple way to look at the fair use defense since that isn't always the case. In fact I really wish that was the case since most music sampling artists would be doing something legal (the courts finds music sampling illegal, sadly).

Private companies, paying for hardware, bandwith and marketing with private money aren't censoring jack.

Show me the smoking gun of the White House strong-arming Yahoo into this or STFU.

With the Obama picture, since it has the logo, and the modifications are seemlessly integrated into the picture, it's impossible for the visitor to distinguish what is real and what is parody.

Sal, Ed, and Dr. M...

The reason why the Barack Obama picture was brought down and the Bush one wasn't, is because the Bush photograph didn't have anyone's branding on it and it was an original piece of work, commissioned by Vanity Fair.

In the Obama photo, it is a manipulation of the original piece of work to convey a different message. The problem is it's not a parody because of the reasons listed above.

Now, if they were to take off the Time branding and other items, then it might be considered parody.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/07/bush-as-joker.html

I don't care which side you're on- if you can't recognize the dangerous reverse McCarthyism going on in the US right now, we're screwed.

Because so many liberals are aligned with the current power structure, and 'think' the ends are aligned with their values, the means are being ignored.

From the post above "The politically charged (and rather disturbing) photo"

"Disturbing"? I guess we know where this writer stands, at the very outset of the article.

Surely they are intelligent, but not business-savvy, people. Surely they know that parody is protected speech.

This may be related to Google posting a Google Map showing the location of Prop 8 supporters. The only reason Google would do that would be to intimidate their political opponents and facilitate their political supporters to vandalize their property and cause harm to the occupants.