This story is all over right now. I'm going to surprise people, I think, when I say the Supreme Court decision is correct. A photographer created an original photo of Prince. The photo was licensed by a magazine to serve as the basis for an artistic interpretation which would then be published once in the magazine, crediting the photographer. And Warhol did the art, the photo was published, and that was it for 30 years. But unknown to the photographer, Warhol didn't stop at one interpretation; he created a whole series of them. The magazine then licensed on of these from the Warhol estate and published it, this time without crediting the artist. Now my reasoning is simple here: if it needed a license the first time, according to all concerned, then it needed a license the second time. Otherwise, it's like paying for the first Beatles song you record but deciding that all others should be free. But one final comment here: the only person not being compensated is Prince (or his estate). If it's not for the fact of Prince being Prince, nobody cares about any of this. But that's what commercial art is, whether it's by the magazine, the artist or the photographer: the extraction of from the community of something somebody else created in order to charge money for it. See also: Creative Commons.
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