Re: Fine Art Reproductions

On 4/7/99, Tyler Ochoa <tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu> wrote:
>
> I think you misunderstood Robert Baron's previous post. No one (and
> certainly not Robert) is claiming that a photographer just "points
> and shoots." No one is denying that it takes skill and judgment to
> reproduce a painting in a photograph; and no one is denying that the
> choices made in doing so are "purposeful."
>
> The question is, for WHAT purpose are these choices being made? What
> Robert said was that the choices made by the photographer "are not
> conscious or purposeful efforts TO REINTERPRET AND TO ADD SOMETHING
> NEW to the objects before the camera." He didn't say they weren't
> purposeful choices; he said that the purpose behind them was to
> reproduce the original as faithfully as possible, rather than to
> transform the original into a different work.

It's possible that you are right, but this drives copyrightability analysis into unexplored territory. Can the originality requirement turn on the subjective intention of the author, ie. whether the difference from the original is purposeful or inadvertant; or a subjective assessment of the result, ie whether the difference is meaningful or meaningless, feature or flaw? Does this mean that my own badly framed, badly lit, poorly focused Kodak instamatic shot of the Mona Lisa is not protectible only because I _wanted_ a faithful reproduction?

John Noble
<jnoble[_at_]dgsys.com> Received on Thu Apr 08 1999 - 14:17:05 GMT