The Los Angeles Times has apparently unmasked the artist who created a poster featuring President Obama portrayed as “The Joker” from “The Dark Night” of the Batman movie series. The poster included the word “socialism” underneath the rendering of Obama.
The artist is not a right-leaning conservative as one might expect. The artist, now “revealed” to be Firas Alkhateeb, is a 20-year-old college student from Chicago and is apparently a supporter of the liberal Congressman and former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Even in light of his support for the liberal Congressman, Alkhateeb says he did not vote in the 2008 presidential election.
After initially posting the picture on Flickr, Alkhateeb was concerned that he might be sued for copyright infringement. According to the article in the LA Times, however, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that defends digital rights, pointed out that Alkhateeb has a strong fair-use defense if he were to be sued.
As some of this blog’s readers may be aware, the doctrine of fair use essentially allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the copyright holders in certain circumstances such as scholarship or a critical review of the copyrighted materials. Beyond the scope of this entry is the issue of whether political commentary included in a visual artwork such as the “Joker” poster would be, in fact, likely to receive the protections of fair use under the copyright laws.
The LA Times article can be found in its entirety here.