"Appropriation" Art?

The lines just got fuzzier . . . sigh

Richard Prince Did Not Infringe Patrick Cariou's Photos, Appeals Court Says

That is pure horse hockey. Some judges don't deserve to be on the bench if they are going to rule like that.

Funny that they should allow it for an artist/photographer, but God forbid you sample 2 seconds of a song with ties to some media giant with paying royalties!! Justice is no longer blind, it's purchased.

Truth is, I have no problem with "appropriation art" if it is done in terms that carry the spirit of our former copyright laws - the ones before ownership in perpetuity. It allows plenty of time for an artist to be the sole beneficiary of their work and then allows others fair access after time has sufficiently passed. Current copyright laws are almost as ridiculous as the way in which they are upheld.

For a great social commentary on it, I highly recommend watching "RIP: A Remix Manifesto". Available free on Hulu. http://www.hulu.com/watch/88782

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.'"


Click to expand...

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?"

You have the spirit of the law, but the way in which "new expression, meaning or message" is applied and "alter" is interpreted depends an awful lot on the size of the pockets of the person from which it was appropriated. And should the appropriated image contain an otherwise trademarked representation of some kind...

I had no idea how deep this stuff went until I watched that documentary (which I didn't even realize was about copyrights - I thought it was purely about mash-ups). Copyright law is ridiculous, and yet impossible to enforce. The idea of my stuff getting used wouldn't bother me so much if I knew we all played by the same rules.

An aside - look into the background of "Go-go" Gagosian the art dealer representing Prince. He was involved in some shady counterfeit stuff with the artist Basquiat back in the heady SoHo art scene in NYC circa 1980. Gagosian is a ruthless money making king maker with very questionable ethics IMO.