lucia’s Comments

• Apr 1st, 2015 @ 3:37pm

  Re:

  on Georgia Supreme Court: No, Writing Mean Things About Copyright Trolling By Linda Ellis Is Not 'Stalking'
  The above was me.
• Apr 1st, 2015 @ 3:36pm

  (untitled comment)

  on Georgia Supreme Court: No, Writing Mean Things About Copyright Trolling By Linda Ellis Is Not 'Stalking'
  The above is me. I forgot to sign in. :(
• Sep 24th, 2014 @ 6:41am

  (untitled comment)

  on Seventh Circuit Court Upholds Fair Use Win, But Does So With Some Convoluted Reasoning And Bad Assumptions
  I'm actually a little disappointed in this paragraph
  Two things can be said for Kienitz. First, defendants did not need to use the copyrighted work. They wanted to mock the Mayor, not to comment on Kienitz’s skills as a photographer or his artistry in producing this particular photograph.
  
  There’s no good reason why defendants should be allowed to appropriate someone else’s copyrighted efforts as the starting point in their lampoon, when so many noncopyrighted alternatives (including snapshots they could have taken themselves) were available. The fair-­use privilege under §107 is not designed to protect lazy appropriators. Its goal instead is to facilitate a class of uses that would not be possible if users always had to negotiate with copyright proprietors. (Many copyright owners would block all paro-­‐‑
  dies, for example, and the administrative costs of finding and obtaining consent from copyright holders would frustrate many academic uses.)
  
  As you correctly noted: there aren't boat loads of non-copyrighted images for people to pick from. In reality, every image is copyrighted when created, a fact the 7th circuit presumably knows. But I also have an objection that relate to why this image has a unique 'non creative' element that makes it especially useful when someone wants to make a political comment on the mayor. That element is: it's the image the politician uses to represent himself to the public. In fact: the mayor uses it on his own promotional web page.
  
  I think when students (or anyone) are making parody t-shirts, it's very important that those who see the image recognize the subject being parodied. In this case, that subject is Mayor Soglin. Yet, to parody any image of the mayor, they need to transform and distort image a lot. In this case, they did the latter leaving only the outline and smile. Fair enough.
  
  But after the image is distorted, there's a risk people will not recognize the subject, Soglin. So why is it that people can recognize it's Soglin? The reason is that this was Soglin's official portrait and the 'outline' (which is not copyrightable) still matches an images many people will have seen in Soglin's promotional materials.
  
  So it seems to me that while the students didn't intend to comment on Kienitz's skills or artistry, it nevertheless was fairly important to use a portrait that Soglin has chosen to represent himself to voters. That's a much smaller class of photos than just any old photo including one the students could select for themselves. Moreover, this photo -- the one the mayor uses on his public web page-- is likely the single best one to use because the mayor uses it.
  
  Note that students cannot create an image with the element "mayor soglin uses this image to represent himself on his own web site", by taking one of their own. Also, all or nearly all images a mayor uses to represent himself on his own website will be copyrighted by someone and that someone will often not wish to permit the image to be used to parody or criticize the subject of the photo.
  
  btw: Note the notion that images used by subjects (like mayors) have a special status when used as parody eviscerates any concern that someone parodying this particular image would harm Kienitz's financial prospects because those wishing to parody a mayor will tend to pick whatever images the person they want to criticize has selected. Kienitz's was selected for parody because Soglin was using it. Soglin or others deciding to use another photographer in the future would only mean the photograph they choose would be the one Soglin picked. So, Soglin would realize that he couldn't protect himself from parody by picking a different photographer and that factor ought to be removed from his choice of image when selecting promotional materials.