I'm not sure that's necessarily applicable, under the basis of "According to the complaint, articles from the Times and the Washington Post were copied verbatim and in their entirety."

There's quite a difference between the usage in this flyer and a verbatim copy of HnG in its entirety (which is one of the common reasons for fair use claims to fail).

Having said that.. I do notice that there is more than a passing similarity between your poster and this:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... C07322.JPG

Where as in the original poster you have used probably less that 1% of the images from HNG, it is VERY clear that your idea to use "Grimsby" on a white background with a black border on a sign is copyright theft...

I should work for Apple...

This is old, but I am reviving the thread.

Using someone else's art for your own commercial purposes (even non-profit) is a violation of copyright. There is no doubt about it.
This is different from plagiarism. Someone suggested you put the source on the poster, which would avoid claims of plagiarism. However, it is still a violation of the owner's rights.
The owner of the art has the right to decide how and when the artwork is used. Thus, without the person/company's permission, you are violating their copyright.

The second part of this is whether it matters.
It is unlikely they could sue you for damages because there are not likely to be any. As another poster pointed out, you are not really taking away any sales from the original. You are not defacing it either. Actually, I am not sure most people would know were it came from unless you told them.
Probably at the most, the copyright owner could get a court to issue an order that requires you to stop producing the posters.
This does not preclude a judge from awarding punitive damages, if they feel like you should be punished.

Good luck

And really nice work.

_________________
求而不得
舍而不能

There's always someone who is prepared to act like an ar$e.

Don't forget you can use the BGA one if you want to (or use that as the basis for one), since it's freely available for non-profit use:

See http://www.britgo.org/covers/index.html

Regards

Jon

Aside from that I find this utterance highly offensive …

… there’s always someone—I actually fear they are the majority—who doesn’t appreciate the fact that creative people spend their life’s time and often also money to create original stuff and who would thoughtlessly use this stuff for their means … sadly often even without even giving credit.

Do you think it’s odd that the more people delve into media creation—be it art/design, music, text, whatever—the more they become concerned about theft of their ideas? Would I have preferred it if the Beatles would have had to work in a factory for their living? Would then all that music have been created?

Assuming that the OP is not a professional in the field of media but rather an enthusiastic, good-hearted person just wanting to promote Go, one can probably be a lot more “forgiving”.

But I, too, am a media creator (as part of my profession), and I can very well understand the need to educate the OP and other readers here in order to raise consciousness (and conscience!) about the fact that, for the creator, the cost of creating media adds to the cost of living, and the pay for any creation often comes a lot later, if at all. And I admit that, while I could be forgiving—after all it’s not my graphics they stole —about the opening post and the creation of a poster with use of copyrighted material (certainly NOT about it’s non-attributed use), I also found the second comment, “I don't think anyone important will see the posters though, so I won't worry too much.” somewhat appalling. Also, when I create a poster, everybody who could view my product is important to me. And the correct way to do it, for me, would be to explain oneself to the artist and ask them for permission to use the material; if they are not bound by contracts w/ publishers they might even allow it for free, if only for the fact that one asks. But one needs to know that this asking is not just polite – everywhere where copyrights exist, this is a duty, and if one is unlucky and “somebody important” sees your work which contained use of copyrighted material that goes beyond “fair use”, you might have to expect high fines. In Germany these currently are at least 200% of what one would have to pay regularly, payable to the author.

(And BTW, legally I’m the exclusive owner of the art used in my avatar image the artist created it exclusively for my use and I own the paper she drew it upon.)

Greetings, Tom

_________________
“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?

Did we necro a sixth-month old thread so we could argue about copyright law? Surely there are newer threads for that