Did the Richard Prince Fair Use Case Just Swallow Copyright Law? Add Some Blue to the Other Guy’s Photo, Call it Fair Use – Really?
Fair use update: I wrote last year about the fair use case in New York involving photographer Richard Prince, where a federal district court rejected Prince’s claim of fair use of photographer Patrick Cariou’s photos of Rastafarians.
Prince appealed his defeat and late last month won a reversal from the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York. The case may not be all that useful guidance for would-be artists on the limits of fair use – more on this below – but more of a legal scrum over what is (or is not) a “transformative” use of a previously copyrighted artwork. Or more particularly, how much a court should get involved in evaluating whether a later user’s re-use of an earlier artist’s work is “transformative” at all.
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