Fight for Your Right to Comment

Last month, Photoshop Disasters and BoingBoing noticed something odd about this Ralph Lauren ad: namely that model Filippa Hamilton’s waist had been whittled into oblivion. Perhaps heavy handed use of the Photoshop tapeworm filter. Seconding the original observation, her head is bigger than her waist. While the ad could have been part of the debate on size, media manipulation and other issues in fashion, the overzealous actions of Ralph Lauren’s legal team have placed it in a different fight: fair use and the blogosphere.

While Photoshop Disasters’ webhost has removed the original post after receiving a DMCA takedown notice for copyright infringement, BoingBoing’s provider didn’t cave. Within 24 hours, the story – and advertising photo, have hit the homepage of Digg, been reblogged on numerous other sites, and sent around the twitterverse over 1300 times. Legal action and threats to feed the models are going back and forth, but at the end of the day BoingBoing is on firm legal ground. Fair use in the US has long held for the incorporation of copyrighted materials for criticism or parody, even on the wild wild web.

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