Visual artists should be very relieved by last week’s decision at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, overturning the District Court’s finding of fair use in Brammer v. Violent Hues. Frankly, fair use advocates should be happy about the ruling, too, because nobody who sincerely cares about copyright should celebrate an error of law. If a court simply disregards the ...
“Content is king” was the catch-phrase of the 1990s and the heady (headless really) days of the Dot Com bubble. And although that stopped being a slogan with the resurgence of Web 2.0, it was still true. Content was still king except the would-be tech giants figured out that they didn’t need to create content but instead just make someone ...
In June, I wrote about the deeply flawed ruling in Brammer v. Violent Hues after the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia handed down some rather inscrutable opinions about an otherwise straightforward copyright infringement case. A production company company called Violent Hues used a photograph belonging to Russell Brammer on a website for the purpose of promoting a ...
Richard Prince is one of the most reviled names in the worlds of photography and copyright. This is because his career and notoriety are built largely on high-profile “appropriation” art works, which have earned him considerably more income than most artists ever see, including, of course, most of the photographers whose images he has used without permission. In September ...
An editorial appeared in The Hill written by Martin Skladany, associate professor of law at Penn State. Titled To curb dangers of media consumption, let’s reconsider copyright law, the article comprises an incoherent litany of social complaints; but to the extent one can glean any thesis from its dissociated and unsupported declaratives, I suppose it would be the following: “…excessive ...
