Sheperd Fairey admits to deception in the litigation about the photograph he used to make the Obama "Hope" poster.

To make the poster he needed to "reference" — his verb — a photo of Obama, and now he wants to defend that use under the Copyright Law. To promote the acceptance of a broad definition of "fair use," it would help if he were thought of as a good guy — the artist, who should be supported in his creative endeavors and given access to the raw materials that he uses for the general benefit of society. And now we see that he has infected his repution with wrongdoing:

"Throughout the case, there has been a question as to which Mannie Garcia photo I used as a reference to design the HOPE image," Fairey said. "The AP claimed it was one photo, and I claimed it was another."

New filings to the court, he said, "state for the record that the AP is correct about which photo I used...and that I was mistaken. While I initially believed that the photo I referenced was a different one, I discovered early on in the case that I was wrong. In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images."

In February, the AP claimed that Fairey violated copyright laws when he used one of their images as the basis for the poster.  In response, the artist filed a lawsuit against the AP, claiming that he was protected under fair use. Fairey also claimed that he used a different photo as the inspiration for his poster.

The copyright issue itself should remain the same, and it's an important one indeed. It's a damned shame that the banner for expansive fair use is being carried by someone who was dishonest and who tried to play the legal system. Why is he admitting his deception now? Presumably, he knew the manipulations would come to light one way or the other, and it was a strategic decision to reveal it this way.

Obviously, this is also an occasion to craft jokes analogizing the Fairey mess to what the subject of the poster is doing, with all the usual sarcasm over the word "hope." Not that any of that mess is poor Obama's fault.