Transcribing a photo or painting into a tattoo seems almost necessarily transformative due to the limitations of the medium.
There are severe limitations on how dark black can get, ink fades which has to be factored in.
Even skill-wise, it's a small subset of tattoo artists that are good enough to replicate a face well enough that it isn't transformative by nature of not looking like the reference at all.
They're not going to extort money from your average scratcher who couldn't manage to violate copyright if they tried.
Even moving beyond that, in practical terms I don't understand the economic reasoning here.
Tattooing is a heavily manual process. There is no route to "industrial copyright infringement" like with books or movies where they can be effortlessly shared. Kat was tattooing for hours on that; I would wager it took over 8 hours just to ink that, ignoring prep work.
Combine a heavily manual process with a limited number of artists capable of producing infringing material and I just can't see what the end goal is. To put everybody back on flash for all their tattoos? To get Midjourney to generate reference material and avoid copyright?
> There is no route to "industrial copyright infringement" like with books or movies where they can be effortlessly shared.
Whether something is copyright infringement is not predicated on the scale that it happens at last time I checked (if you make x copies per day you're fine, but if you hit y (>x) you better watch your legal back).
That experiment isn't close to cutting it; I promise you that machine will never infringe on copyright because it's incapable of that detail.
Just look at that line in the Verge article. It's bad. Now imagine what its shading would look like.
I don't doubt we'll get there eventually, but that's not particularly close.
It is remarkably round though, it killed that part.
> Whether something is copyright infringement is not predicated on the scale that it happens at last time I checked (if you make x copies per day you're fine, but if you hit y (>x) you better watch your legal back).
I'm not arguing that scale makes it legal to do, just that scale can make it impractical to execute.
I view this as a feature of copyright. It's goal is to promote the arts and sciences, and I don't think violations of copyright too small to be worth filing lawsuits for are harming the arts or sciences.
Even winning this lawsuit seems like a Pyrrhic victory. What do they gain? The judgement can't be that high, what kind of damages can the photographer show? The photographer certainly has standing to sue, I just don't understand the end goal here.
You make a good point, I don't know why you're downvoted.
I'm on the side of the tattoo artist on this one, but it does seem like a tattoo printer would not be far into the future with our current tech. I'm honestly more surprised this hasn't caught on more.
I think your comment is very reasonable and one that the photographer might agree with. He will collect the fee for this photograph and not ever again a single license for tattoo purposes will be sold by him.
This smells like some greedy lawyer wanting a big flashy case to promote their work ("the lawyer who sued the famous tattoo artist and won.. there goes a happy client with a few extra bucks").
I tend to disagree, though I admit I may be biased, as a photographer. And for the fact that Kat Von D's own legal team has been quite aggressive in pursuing other artists reproducing, sorry, "transforming" her work.
But I don't see anything overly original in this. It'd be like people selling their colored pencil facsimiles of the Mona Lisa. There's talent in the technique, but there's next to no creativity in the artistic expression.
Also, as an aside, the photographer isn't exactly hurting for money either, so I don't think it's simple greed.
> Also, as an aside, the photographer isn't exactly hurting for money either, so I don't think it's simple greed.
This seems contradicted by the article:
> “I support my family by licensing my images. Please respect the rights of all artists,” the photographer’s Instagram bio reads.
> Bloomberg Law reports that Sedlik’s attorneys showed examples of photographs that he has licensed to artists in the past for them to adapt and sell, according to parameters the photographer and other artists negotiate. In one case where a painter adapted the Miles Davis portrait into a more colorful image, Sedlik expects to make up to $85,000.
I do some hobby photography, but nothing worth monetizing so we may not share the same views.
I get what you're saying, but I would honestly say the same thing of the original photograph. Its bog-standard "serious and a little melancholic", with the only really notable part being the subject.
The execution is certainly talented (far better than I could muster), but I've gone for this "look" in a bunch of portraits and I've never seen this photo before this article.
I guess what I'm saying is that if the client asked for a serious portrait of a person, this is basically exactly what my mind thinks of. Serious facial expression, dark vignette, grayscale; the hand is the only part that isn't a cliche at this point.
Photography is kind of a weird space for this, imo, because it captures something that actually existed, almost exactly (minus editing). I.e. what would it look like if someone drew/painted/tattooed Miles Davis doing that gesture without using that photo as a reference? How much prompting would it take for them to replicate this photo? I suspect if you asked an artist for "a brooding Miles Davis making a shhh gesture" you'd get something remarkably close to this.
I'm rambling a bit, but I do think creativity in photography as it relates to copyright is an interesting question. The medium demands that the subject and pose are real, and there's certainly creativity in choosing those, but to what degree does the photographer own "that subject in that pose"?
> And for the fact that Kat Von D's own legal team has been quite aggressive in pursuing other artists reproducing, sorry, "transforming" her work.
I'm not really familiar with Kat Von D, but that's disappointing if true. I tried to search, but the results are flooded with this exact case at the moment and gave up after 3 pages of results.
> It'd be like people selling their colored pencil facsimiles of the Mona Lisa. There's talent in the technique, but there's next to no creativity in the artistic expression.
Greedy lawyers and legitimate cases aren't mutually exclusive. Most litigation that moves the needle often requires a big pay day due to our broken legal system.
Imagine being a photographer, and your most famous image becomes an image that everyone recognizes because “that stage picture that Kat Von D tattooed on X celebrity” seems fair enough that she should pay you for your work. And sure the media might be imperfect. So is transferring a picture to a r-shirt, yet there we recognize the rights of the artist.
It’s funny that if someone was copying her original tattooes the she would obviously be arguing that it was infringement.
I can imagine that, but I see it as a derivative work so it'd be fine with me. I'm not a famous or professional photographer, though.
I would be touched and honored beyond belief that anyone cares about my work enough to have it permanently inscribed on their skin to carry it with them through life and into death. And to have a talented artist doing the inscription would be beyond belief.
I'm not saying the photographer ought to feel that way, that's just my reaction as Joe Schmoe.
There's no harm to the marketability of my art. Frankly, the person getting tattooed probably cares more about it being Miles Davis than it being an exact replica of that photo. If I made a stink, they'd just change the tattoo design enough to be fair use. Make it Miles Davis doing "hear no evil" instead of "speak no evil" or something.
I just don't see this tattoo taking anything away from the photographer, so I don't see a need for Kat Von D to pay.
Moreover, it's fine for Kat Von D, who can afford a legal team and probably charges enough to have them verify that a tattoo doesn't infringe. Your average $75/hr or $100/hr artist doesn't have those options, and will be open to being bombarded with copyright claims of varying quality, including trolls.
> So is transferring a picture to a r-shirt, yet there we recognize the rights of the artist.
This is notably different because it is often a literal digital copy. I have had T shirts made, you can just send them a digital image. I didn't have to transcribe it or put in any effort.
> It’s funny that if someone was copying her original tattooes the she would obviously be arguing that it was infringement.
I don't think this is particularly relevant. Kat Von D can be both a hypocrite and not guilty of copyright infringement. I also think there's a difference between transcribing art between formats and imitating a piece of art in the same format.
Paraphrasing a book is very different than converting it to a play.
If this image results in her making lots of money, then she profited off of it, even if she didn't exactly reproduce it.
Imagine a tattoo artist creating a tattoo, and then another artist makes a bundle by stealing the first artist's design. That's what copyright is there to protect.
Just like she deserves to make money by creating art, so does the photographer. Can't have it both ways.
I don't believe the photographer's case is seeking that, and I believe only Kat Von D is named in the lawsuit. A separate suit would have to be filed against the person carrying around their unlicensed IP.
> But then the state is telling someone what to do with their body.
I don't think that's a problem for 95% of people. Pretty much every state on the planet tells people what to do with their bodies all the time. If you eat/smoke/whatever certain plants that are found in nature, they can lock you in a cage and steal your livelihood. I think it's heinous and wrong, but it is the current status (even though it ought not to be).
Transcribing a photo or painting into a tattoo seems almost necessarily transformative due to the limitations of the medium.
There are severe limitations on how dark black can get, ink fades which has to be factored in.
Even skill-wise, it's a small subset of tattoo artists that are good enough to replicate a face well enough that it isn't transformative by nature of not looking like the reference at all.
They're not going to extort money from your average scratcher who couldn't manage to violate copyright if they tried.
Even moving beyond that, in practical terms I don't understand the economic reasoning here.
Tattooing is a heavily manual process. There is no route to "industrial copyright infringement" like with books or movies where they can be effortlessly shared. Kat was tattooing for hours on that; I would wager it took over 8 hours just to ink that, ignoring prep work.
Combine a heavily manual process with a limited number of artists capable of producing infringing material and I just can't see what the end goal is. To put everybody back on flash for all their tattoos? To get Midjourney to generate reference material and avoid copyright?