Photographer Threatens To Sue Over Pixel Art of Photo

Laughing Squid:

Andy Baio tells the story of how noted photographer Jay Maisel threatened to sue him because of a pixelated version of of a Miles Davis photo that Andy had a friend create for the cover of “Kind of Bloop”, chiptune tribute to Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”. According to Andy’s lawyers, the pixel art image is fair use of the photo. Andy ended up settling with Maisel, playing him $32,500. To help Andy recoup his legal costs, please consider purchasing a copy of “Kind of Bloop”.

There’s a lively discussion about this issue of this taking place on Jay Maisel’s Facebook page.

People have been encouraging Jay Maisel to address this issue on his blog.

This is outright crazy. It’s one thing to protect the use of something that you’ve created, but to threaten legal action against a project that couldn’t possibly carry the financial burden (nevermind is within fair use anyway!) is just sad.