NY federal appeals court: Artist Richard Prince made fair use of photos taken in Jamaica - The Washington Post

The appeals court, in a majority decision written by Judge Barrington Parker, said Batts was incorrect to conclude that Prince’s art needed to comment on Cariou’s work to be considered different enough and “fair use,” a legal term that describes the point at which art based on a copyrighted work is transformed enough that copyrights are not violated. The decision said 25 of Prince’s artworks “manifest an entirely different aesthetic” from Cariou’s photographs. “Where Cariou’s serene and deliberately composed portraits and landscape photographs depict the natural beauty of Rastafarians and their surrounding environs,” the decision said, “Prince’s crude and jarring works, on the other hand, are hectic and provocative.”