Manny Garcia gives up his claim that he, not the Associated Press, owns the copyright in the photo he shot and that Shepard Fairey used as the source of the image in the Obama Hope poster.

Manny Garcia has dropped all the claims in the lawsuit over whether Shepard Fairey’s Obama Hope poster infringed the copyright in the photo Garcia had taken and that Fairey had used as the source of the image. The Stipulation of Discontinuance with Prejudice filed in the case is embedded below.

What this means is that Garcia has given up his claim that he rather than the Associated Press owns the copyright in the photo. The Associated Press claims that it owns the copyright in the photo on the grounds that Garcia shot it as a “work for hire.” The fact that the claims by Garcia and against him have been discontinued by agreement of the parties “with prejudice” means that Garcia has given up any right to re-assert those claims in the future. The agreement constitutes a final, binding determination that the copyright in the photo belongs to the Associated Press.

It does nothing, however, to illuminate the outcome of the claim by the Associated Press that Fairey’s poster infringes the copyright in the photo. But it does illuminate those familiar with the history of copyright know — the enlargement and enforcement of copyright has always been more about protecting the interests of publishers than it has been of promoting artistic creation:

There is one group of people not shocked by the record industry’s policy of suing randomly chosen file sharers: historians of copyright. They already know what everyone else is slowly finding out: that copyright was never primarily about paying artists for their work, and that far from being designed to support creators, copyright was designed by and for distributors — that is, publishers . . .