Stanford University's Fair Use Project, it is being reported, has made the decision to curtail their legal representation of Shepard Fairey because of Fairey's revelation that he misrepresented which Associated Press photo was the source material for his Obama HOPE poster, so iconic that it is now hanging in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. With this latest twist, professor Tim Wu has a go over on Slate at making sense of what "fair use" of creative content is in the United States. It's an important question for the many of us -- activist designers, political bloggers, video makers -- who build creative stuff on creative stuff that others have built. So, in the interest of advancing clarity about what constitutes the fair use of creative content, let's summarize Wu and tease out what we know about this latest twist in the Fairey case.

Fairey had, up until now, maintained -- and had mocked up digital sketches to make is seem like -- he had cropped and reworked a middle-distance AP photograph by photographer Mannie Garcia that showed Barack Obama seated on a dais to the left of actor George Clooney at a Darfur event. Fairey now admits that his inspiration was instead a close-up shot of Obama, also by Garcia and also at that same Darfur event. Distinctions without a difference, right?

Not when it comes to what counts as fair use in the U.S. today...