Comment by graderjs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by graderjs | Hacker News Reader

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This is because you're not equipped to judge what's transformative or not. Transformative is not just about the visual, art's also about the context.

You should have wondered, why can't your designer pal do it, if it's OK for Warhol?

The answer may have been: Warhol's process, coloring, final result, context, was way more transformative physically, and also semantically.

I think this is where we need art experts who are advising judges, it's sort of like maybe that trope where judges are making judgements about encryption and they don't understand the technology. Not assuming these judges were not art buffs, it's the SC, it's probably a very complex, refined, elaborate, and legally sound judgement...but I think they're missing some key connection to art to have gone this way.

2 dissenters thank God. Hopefully overturned in future, or further refined to protect artists and great art. I think the plaintiff here is less an artist and more a "professional paparazzi with a lighting set up".

The court generally tries to avoid playing art critic. It may be better that they do.

To that end, a lot has been made of Warhol's soup cans, but the big distinction here is that he's not using them to sell soup. Sure, they are a different medium and all, but the really important factor is that those paintings don't have the same commercial purpose as Campbell's ads.

In this case, his art did have the same commercial purpose and was a close copy, meaning that the fair use analysis didn't go his way.

Thanks for that analysis. So...really? The prince work was editorial art commission and the purpose of that is to sell magazines? Is that idea?

I think that sounds a little weird. Walk into the downtown corporate building of big firms in any city in the world, and I think you often see large scale art in the high ceilinged foyer: these pieces are often specially commissioned by the building owners or firm. Would the purpose of those, by that judgement, be to "sell the firm" (or equivalently raise its profile to by a chain of events, eventually increase revenue?).

To me that just sounds weird, because often they are great art in themselves, and indeed many go on to be sold to other collections, or loaned to museums, and throughout their life they are rotated through the firms buildings or collections--just like regular art.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding your meaning or the connection here.

Well, the work wasn't necessarily for a commercial purpose on its own, but the combination of the work and the contract made it commercial, and this is the risk you run with any sort of "fanfiction" like this.

You have a lot of latitude to produce it for fun, but if you want to actually go to sell it into the same market as the original work, then there are problems.

Ok

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