"The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission," the AP's director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement. "AP safeguards its assets and looks at these events on a case-by-case basis. We have reached out to Mr. Fairey's attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution."

link

But Fairey has instead sued AP:

In a pre-emptive strike, the street artist Shepard Fairey filed a lawsuit on Monday against The Associated Press, asking a federal judge to declare that he is protected from copyright infringement claims in his use of a news photograph as the basis for a now ubiquitous campaign poster image of President Obama.

And the real kicker is that it turns out that AP does not even own the copyright.

Further complicating the dispute, Mr. Garcia [the photographer] contends that he, not The Associated Press, owns the copyright for the photo, according to his contract with the The A.P. at the time.

And if that is not enough to stop AP from suing Fairey this certainly is not going to look good in court:

"I don't condone people taking things, just because they can, off the Internet," Mr. Garcia said. "But in this case I think it's a very unique situation."

He added, "If you put all the legal stuff away, I'm so proud of the photograph and that Fairey did what he did artistically with it, and the effect it's had."

NYT

It was nice to see someone take a full hour to demonstrate that Amity (quasi leader of anti-FDR folks) has cherry picked the historical record.

P.S.