The court went on to say that Supreme Court rulings have emphasized that to qualify for fair use, "a new work generally must alter the original with 'new expression, meaning, or message.'"
Just thinking aloud here . . . mostly because I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this decision and how we got to this point.
If I have an idea for a composite (Photoshop) that uses several photographs, and say one of them is yours, I would think that the
ethical thing to do is approach you for a license. Most licenses state that attribution is required and that the photo cannot be altered. So that puts me in a dilemma, maybe, because I may want to alter it in the composite and would have to get your permission to do so.
So according to the above quote, I can legally "appropriate" your photo because by using it in a composite I have ". . . altered the original with new expression . . ." and it therefore, qualifies under fair use, and the "new use" doesn't even have to be a "commentary" on the original (which would at least have given attribution to the original photo).
Am I seeing this correctly,and if so, why would anyone bother buying stock photography again if all they have to do is "appropriate" and "transform?"