The much debated artist Shepard Fairey has escaped prison time after a legal fight over his Barack Obama Hope poster.

The story is a little complicated so we’ll keep things to the point and omit lots of legal jargon however what has happened so far is this. Fairey created the now iconic poster of Obama as he campaigned for the presidential election in 2008. It turned out that the image used for the poster was a copyrighted Associated Press photograph although the artist denied the claim at the time. He even went on to sue the agency but it later emerged that he’d deleted a number of files from his computer and he admitted lying about which image he had used.

He pleaded guilty to criminal contempt recently in court and although many thought he’d face jail time it turns out that because of his work with charity and a number of letters of support he’s managed to face any hard time. Instead he’s been made to pay a $25,000 fine and will also carry out some community service.

Just the other day we told you about how fellow artist Dave Kinsey had produced a similar piece for Obama’s latest campaign. Kinsey however was clever enough to use a generic image of a hand doing the peace sign so we doubt he’ll run into any similar trouble.