Is AP violating Bill Clinton's intellectual property rights?

As you know, we've all been reporting a lot lately about the Grinch's Associated Press' campaign to stop Christmas the Internet. Well, I was over at Atrios' site this morning and saw him link to AP's main page promoting its Internet censorship campaign.



Then I looked at the top of the page, and saw something that looked awfully familiar. Check out the guy on the right. Do you know him?



The white hair, the bit lip, the white columns. Sure looks an awful lot like President Bill Clinton. And it sure looks an awful lot like AP is suggesting that President Bill Clinton is behind their Internet censorship campaign. And while I can't swear to it, I'm going to go an a limb here and assume that Bill Clinton never gave AP permission to imply that Bill Clinton endorsed their censorship campaign.

You see, AP, I'm sure, owns the right to that Bill Clinton photo. They probably took the photo. But they don't own Bill Clinton's "right to publicity." That's the use of someone else's likeness, especially a celebrity's, to promote your own commercial venture. Using that likeness, without permission, would be a violation of the very intellectual property laws that AP claims it so selflessly is trying to defend.

If that is a photo of President Clinton, I sure hope AP got President Clinton's permission to apparently use him as their mascot for their massive online censorship campaign. Otherwise it would be awfully ironic if, while complaining about their own intellectual property rights supposedly being violated, AP violated Bill Clinton's same rights.