Richard Prince Continues To Push The Boundaries Of Copyright Law In Selling Other People's Instagram Selfies

You may recall over the past few years, our coverage of a key "fair use" lawsuit involving "appropriation artist" Richard Prince. That case involved Prince taking photos of various Rastafarians from a book by Patrick Cariou, and then adding a bit of stuff to the photos, declaring it art and profiting mightily. We were troubled by an initial ruling against Prince, which involved judges determining whether or not his work counted as "art." Thankfully an appeals court went the other way and the case then settled before any further review. Prince is now making more news with his new gallery exhibit that appears to involve him screenshotting various selfies posted to Instagram, adding a "comment" to them, blowing them up and printing them out to put on a gallery wall. Then, you can buy them for around $100,000 a piece. And, no, Prince did not communicate with or get permission from anyone whose photos he is using. Here's just one example (as highlighted in the linked Fortune piece). An Instagram user named Doe Deere discovered that this selfie then appeared in Prince's latest showing:

A photo posted by Doe Deere (@doedeere) on Nov 1, 2014 at 10:06am PDT

And here's her post about the fact that her own picture had been displayed and then sold for ~$90,000.

Figured I might as well post this since everyone is texting me. Yes, my portrait is currently displayed at the Frieze Gallery in NYC. Yes, it's just a screenshot (not a painting) of my original post. No, I did not give my permission and yes, the controversial artist Richard Prince put it up anyway. It's already sold ($90K I've been told) during the VIP preview. No, I'm not gonna go after him. And nope, I have no idea who ended up with it! 😳 #lifeisstrange #modernart #wannabuyaninstagrampicture

A photo posted by Doe Deere (@doedeere) on May 17, 2015 at 9:05am PDT

As you can see, Doe Deere says she's not going to sue. And at least one other Instagram user has said that he too won't sue -- even though he's clearly pissed off about it. Sean Fader, a struggling artist, noted that suing would actually play into Prince's own hands, making Prince "look like he’s thinking about rights in digital spaces, and that the work is questioning authorship in contemporary society." Instead, Fader has decided that if an appropriation artist is going to appropriate his work, he might as well appropriate it right back:

“I’m really interested in the idea of re-appropriating my own work and taking the work out of the frame that he’s put it in, re-engineering it to continue the conversation that I was interested in from the beginning, and shifting the work back to that space,” Fader said. “I struggled for a while to decide how I felt about it. When I went and saw it I was fuming. I would be psyched to be appropriated into work that was good. I just think the work is flat. It flattened the work in a way that I was not thrilled about its denial. By not communicating with me, by not talking to me, he denied every level of shared authorship, or engagement, all of those things that were so important to me in the work. That’s what irked me about the whole thing. So Prince made his move, now I’ll make mine.”

How'd he do that? By sending out a press release, telling people to visit his work in a new exhibit "organized" by Richard Prince. So far it doesn't appear that anyone has sued him -- but some of the commentary on this is completely inane. The Washington Post had a totally clueless story suggesting that your Instagram photos aren't really yours. Frankly, this does seem like a jackass move by Prince, but (no matter what Fader feels above) it does raise questions about "rights in digital spaces" and -- more particularly -- art. Part of the