Copyright infringement?

I ain't gonna lie, I read about this yesterday but I don't recall which site it was on. It turns out the Associated Press wants their share of the glory on the success of an art print. As an artist, my initial sentiment was that of being upset at the Associated Press for wanting to share in Shepard Fairey's royalties. I was under the impression that as long as 10 % of the original image was changed then that was o.k. However, since I love photography, too, I attempted to see this debate from the photographer's (Mannie Garcia) perspective. As a photographer, I'd be pretty darned pissed if one of my photos was used as a basis for someone else's success. As an artist, I'd be ticked at myself for not thinking of doing the same thing the print artist did in the first place. I do love screen printing and the print making so I'd definitely kick myself for not coming up with the design.

Technically, the print of Obama isn't identical to the photo because it's not a duplicate photo. The photo doesn't show blue highlights or red shadows. The print doesn't include the details of the flag in the photo's background. The print is vectorized, which means it's made up of clean lines. I'd freak if Obama stepped out of the print poster because normal humans don't have that skin tone! So, I did very minimal research and came across this article "Obey Plagiarist Shepard Fairey: A critique by artist Mark Vallen." Basically, Fairey's history indicates that he doesn't have original ideas but "borrows" ideas created by other artists. He tweaks the original image to re-create it but when put side by side, the images resemble the original artwork. Then I came across a question on About.com which made more sense to me than anything else: "If I change 10 %, isn't it a new image?". Basically, as an artist, one can use 10 % of an original piece and then manipulate the 10 % to create an original piece of art.

So then, my brain wandered off onto Andy Warhol's Marylin Monroe prints. What about them? They were also based off an original photo, right? So, what makes the Obama print different from the Marylin Monroe print? Basically, Warhol used multiple prints of Marylin Monroe to create one full piece of artwork. The outline of her being is in the piece, but the colors used aren't indicative of how Marilyn Monroe truly appeared. This brings me back to square one. So the image of Obama wasn't an original idea. The fact is Fairey manipulated the colors, vectorized Obama's face, added type and created a print... those were all original ideas. If I decide to create my own artwork based on our President, will our President come after me for royalties when it becomes a successful piece of art because he didn't give me rights to use his image??