Copyright Fair Use and New Meaning

 

Blake Gopnik's NYT's great piece about the NY appellate court's decision to consider this Andy Warhol image not "transromative" enough for fair use.  

the original trial court found that in the process of going from her black-and-white photo to Warhol’s colorful silk-screen, the image of Prince had been so transformed that Warhol’s use should count as “fair.”

  But the appeals court last month disagreed, ruling that Warhol’s reuse of the Goldsmith had not, in fact, been transformative enough. Any re-user’s work, said the appellate judges, “must reasonably be perceived as embodying an entirely distinct artistic purpose, one that conveys a ‘new meaning or message’ ” — the judges are quoting from an earlier Supreme Court decision — “entirely separate from its source material.”