[Leica] Re: Fair use

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

This morning the CBS TV show "Sunday Morning" featured the work of  
Shepard Fairy, the street artist whose rip off of the AP photo of  
Barack Obama sparked a lawsuit. While not exactly condoning Fairy's  
actions, the story tried to justify the point that artists were free  
to violate the copyright laws if it was done in the name of art.  
Examples used included Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup can and Marcel  
Duchamp's Mona Lisa with a moustache. Apart from the inconvenient  
fact that the Mona Lisa was never copyrighted, does the LUG consider  
this "Fair Use." Could I take one of Gee Bee's pictures of the Lake  
Country, stick a sunflower on it, and call it 'Kansas as it should be."

How much alteration of an image does the LUG think is necessary  
before a work can be considered original and not derivative? Is it  
the actual image that is important or the artist's or photographer's  
intent? As a point of reference, my wife, who is a well respected  
artist, refuses to paint from a photograph which she, herself, has  
not taken. She won't even paint from any of mine. (I hope this is a  
tribute to her sterling character and not a critique of my photographs.)

Larry Z