I think that it is absolutely ridiculous for anyone to sue anyone else over using original pieces of art or music. In the photograph of Obama, the artist , Fairey, has clearly transformed it into a piece of art. It is not the same photograph by any means, especially when it took two years to track down the original. The colors are different, the composition is different, the shadows are different; almost everything is different except that it is a picture of Obama from the same angle. If someone took a picture of Obama that happened to be at the same angle as by Garcia, should they be sued too?
Art is something that shows freedom of expression and pushes boundaries. How are people supposed to be able to do that freely, when sharing pieces of art (like the original Obama photograph) to work with, becomes a tedious political argument? In order for art to reach it’s full potential, I think that it should be free for anyone to use anything, with small amount of recognition and credit going to the originals. And since I like to think about art as something of passion than money, I don’t think money should be discussed at all when it comes to crediting originals. If someone makes a lot of money over a piece of transformed work, and the owner of the original didn’t, then too bad. The newer version of the work must have had something more like-able to it, was released at a better time, or the artist had more connections. Either way, the public likes it more and the original artist should just try again to spread their work.
I feel that Gillis faces the same issue. Like tangible art, music should not be heavily protected. In order for more ideas to come about, the only thing that artists should have to worry about is the actual production of the art, not whether they will be sued for coming up with a great idea to use an original work in that was done by someone else, especially if the artist of the original work does not want to share.
Also, there are so many pieces of art already in the world, that producing something similar, like in the case of Gordon and McGinley, is an inevitable occurrence. I want to be able to make whatever comes to my head without worrying about if someone already thought of it. I should still be credited for being able to come up with the same idea, rather than be sued for it. Like science, without sharing copyrights, ideas, and knowledge, the art world will be severely limited and will never reach limitless potentials.