Re: Intermediate copying

Charles Glasser/NYU Law wrote:
>
> Art department takes photographs of ordinary household items from
> catalogs, and scans them digitally, then using Photoshop manipulates
> the image to create an entirely new image.

Current copyright law, IMHO, appropriate addresses only 'derivative works.' An 'entirely new image' is a red herring. If the new image is 'entirely new' and cannot be recognized as being made from the original, then it is as if the the manipulator did in fact start with a blank sheet. Only if the 'new' image can be recognized as a derivative form of the original image (or images) does it make sense to talk about copyright violation.

• snip -
  >
  > But isn't the orginal scanning itself an infringement? Using a photo
  > to create an entirely "different" work is infringment under cases
  > like Rogers v. Koons. But there, the creative expression of the
  > original was more or less intact, albeit now in sculpted form. In
  > my hypo, it no longer exists.
  

Koons life-size sculpture of two persons sitting on a bench holding almost a dozen puppies was very close to an exact duplication of Rogers photograph. According to an article in an ASMP newsletter, Koons 'creativity' consisted of ripping off the copyright notice from a postcard bearing the photograph and sending the postcard, along with dimensions and directions to duplicate the postcard as much as possible, to his foundry.

Koons claimed in court that it was an entirely different work because (1) he was an artist turning Rogers simple photograph into a work of art and (2) his work was a scuplture and not an image photograph.

Best,

Greg

Greg Elin
<elin[_at_]interport.net> Received on Fri Apr 12 1996 - 22:06:43 GMT