Friday, June 14, 2013

Cute rephrasing of Prince v. Cariou

I belatedly found Shane Ferro's take, via the Art Law Blog.  Worth reading in its (short) entirety, but:
You got yourself in a lot of trouble with this Canal Zone thing. Actually, you got yourself in a lot of trouble when you got sued and then you didn’t take the legal proceedings seriously, which really pissed off the district court judge. That was unappreciated.
However, the system can’t just go overturning current copyright jurisprudence because you were obnoxious under oath. Since you apparently don’t want to or are otherwise unable to argue transformative intent, I’m going to do that on your behalf right now (thank your lawyer). It’s pretty clear from looking at your artwork that the series is totally different from the underlying Cariou works. I get that feeling because they mostly seem to make fun of said works.
It’s not the usual way to defend fair use, but I can’t really argue with the work itself. Cariou’s photos are clearly meant to document, while yours seem to be intended to piss people off (including the artist being appropriated). That is, in fact, one way of being transformative. I find that your complete lack of regard for the meaning of the original works is decent evidence you weren’t stealing them outright.

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