Apparently a 20 year-old college student managed to make a massive political statement without even trying. Some idle time on Photoshop that resulted in an Obama Time magazine cover being painted over as the Batman “Joker” became a mysterious physical poster after someone took the photo off of a flickr. It’s a complcated media situation to be in. The original photo creator didn’t distribute the posters, but he did leave the photo up on a website for anyone to take. So where does he stand? Copyright infringement is a potential issue here, despite the fact that he didn’t create the widely distributed posters. He may still face consequences as the originator of the image because he is the only person to tie blame to at the moment.
It just goes to show that the internet is a deep well from which anyone in the world can draw from. Anything that goes up on a website is public and you cannot really control what people might do with your content. This is both a blessing and a curse, depending on the situation. The vast sharing of content leads to both an increase of informative/artistic resources and the misuse/abuse of those resources. Additionally, the reach of any content is potentially infinite (no matter how unintentional or misused it may be). My favorite podcast (On The Media) gave a great analogy for this, stating that the internet makes the men’s room wall open to the public, but without the capability to scrub it clean. This shouldn’t stop us from producing and sharing content on the internet, but should instill caution regarding what we choose to share and how we do so.
2 years ago