Is Photoshopping a Crime?

A friend shared a link with me today:
Georgia Lawmaker Earnest Smith wants to make image photoshopping a crime.

Basically, Representative Smith is displeased that someone used a photo editing program to place his head on the body of a porn actor. For this post, I'll use the term "Photoshopping" in lieu of a more generic "photo manipulating."

I actively avoid political stuff on my blog, but this kind of nonsense is dangerous and totalitarian. So, like I hope many other people are doing tonight, I'm Photoshopping images of him and sharing them with everyone.

Image manipulation is expression. Let's establish that up front. In America, the Bill of Rights FIRST AMENDMENT guarantees freedom of speech (among other freedoms.) So to find out about that right, one need not read very far into the Bill of Rights. Further, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that "[all people] shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice."

So, I plan, tonight, to exercise my freedom of expression with my own Photoshopping contribution to Representative Smith's crusade to ban Photoshopped images as a form of free expression. A note on the sources images: everything I used in these comes from the public domain. Here are some of the links that I can remember:

Earnest Smith's photo at Ballotpedia
From that page: "This image comes from the http://www.legis.ga.gov/en-us/default.aspx website. It it used here because a Ballotpedia staffer requested and obtained permission to use it and was informed by the relevant government office or private entity or individual who created this image that the image is in the public domain."


Constitution image at PublicDomainFiles.com
The rights are in the website's name.

I also obtained the Statue of Liberty, American flag, and Bill of Rights images from PublicDomainFiles.com, but I haven't been able to find those links again. The Grumpy cat image may not be public domain, but everyone else is using it for Memes, so why not?

Here are my silly, low-effort Earnest Smith Photoshops. Each image is followed by a brief description of what the image is trying, artistically, to convey. Images fall under our freedom of expression, similar to our freedom of speech.



Obviously, the point of this image is to make a light-hearted jibe about Representative Smith being grumpy. Would he have been less grumpy if his face had been Photoshopped onto a gay porn actor? Probably not. And yes, that is a quote from Representative Smith.


This ought to be pretty self-explanatory. My point is that America is the Land of the Free. Free. You can't have FREEDOM without FREE. Durp. And, for the record, our freedom of speech comes from, i.q., full paragraph three above, the U.S. Bill of Rights First Amendment. First. Not, like, the 95th or something that would require a lot of reading to get to. Just sayin'...



I stole this idea from a photo I saw at PublicDomainFiles.com of an eagle head blended into an American flag. Ideas aren't copyrightable! Anyway, this is a bit of patriotic mockery intended to point out how unpatriotic the act of attacking Americans' rights is. No bones about it: dismantling the rights that have enabled this country to become the country we know it as is nothing shy of the antithesis of patriotism. The antithesis of patriotism in another word? Nationalism.

In this case, though, I suspect Representative Smith's intention is not nationalism, and this resulted simply from his sensibilities being offended by the nature of the image. Hence my avoidance of a prurient Photoshopping. No, I don't think anyone should be attacked in such a base manner. Instead, Photoshoppers, provide a legitimate commentary on a person's views through a more thoughtful expression. Sure we are free to simply slap a face on a porn star's body, but what does that say other than that someone using Photoshop is a tool and likely a decerebrate moron, too. But retaliating by attacking all American's rights, honestly, is not better. And, I submit, art cannot by definition be prurient.