This Artist Stole a $2,000,000 Photo… And Legalized Art Theft? lw016c07

[00:00:00]Case seven, Cariou versus Prince, 2013.

[00:00:05]Patrick Cariou spent years living among Rastafarian communities in Jamaica, documenting their lives through photography. In 2000, he published [music] those images in a book called Yes Rasta. Years later, artist Richard Prince took 30 of those photographs without permission. He painted over them, adding figures, guitars, and abstract shapes, then exhibited them at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. Some of those works sold for up to $2 million. Cariou filed suit for copyright infringement. The central legal question became whether Prince's alterations qualified as fair [music] use under copyright law. Specifically, whether the new works were transformative enough to stand on their own. The Southern District of New York initially ruled in Cariou's favor, finding that Prince had not sufficiently transformed the original photographs, and ordering the infringing works impounded. Prince appealed. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals then conducted its own analysis, examining each altered work individually to determine whether a reasonable observer would view it as a new expression with a different character or meaning. The Appeals Court ruled largely in Prince's favor, finding that 25 of the 30 works were transformative as a matter of law. The decision expanded the boundaries of fair use, establishing that an artist does not need [music] to directly comment on the original work, only create something new from it. The remaining five works were sent back to the lower court for further review.