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Saturday, 14 April 2012

Does partially recreating an exisiting composition infringe copyright law?

There has been a ruling in court that a photographer who partial recreated an image using the same angle and some of the compositional elements has broken copy right law. What do you think?

Full story here: http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/-Landmark-ruling-to-be-challenged/25891

I feel that this example is far to clique to even begin a copy right debate, are they also suing countless tourists who have no doubt taken similar photographs with he same angle and compositional elements? As I previously mentioned on the discussion on digital photography, I feel that in our modern lives we are bombarded and over saturated in photographic imagery, I feel this has meant we can be influenced and inspired without even realizing it, we can have ideas without even being consciously aware we could be "stealing" them from something we have previously seen, so does this in fact mean that it is even possible to "steal" an idea?

I can sympathies with the original photographer, however photographing in such an iconic environment is going to led to a loss of originality, and who is to say that someone else did not take the same photograph before he did himself?

Does this law also mean that artists can no longer pay homage or pastiche to others? Will laws like these prevent people from creating images and using them publicly?



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