Fair Use and the AP

The Associated Press is being accused of copyright infringement due to distributing personal pictures from an individual's Myspace account through the wire services. The individual is Ashley Youmans AKA Ashley Alexandra Dupre, AKA Kristen, of Eliot Spitzer fame, and she is claiming that AP did not ask permission before using her personal photographs for their stories. The link above is an article from a photo magazine, that discusses some basic fair use implications of the controversy.

What makes this somewhat ironic is that the AP recently made a big deal over the issue of fair use and made an accusation that a blogger, who does photojournalism criticism and had compared AP photographs, had infringed on their copyright.

Addendum: William Patry convincingly argues that the NY Post's use of other photos of Ms. Youmans constitute fair use.