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I did mistakenly state Prince instead of Goldsmith. But silly enough that sort of plays into my hypothetical. Prince would own his likeness, which he would use
by Jaygles 5y ago
I did mistakenly state Prince instead of Goldsmith. But silly enough that sort of plays into my hypothetical. Prince would own his likeness, which he would use to claim partial ownership of Goldsmith's photo. And Goldsmith and Prince would have a claim on Warhol's usage of the photo/likeness.
I don't think the situation you describe applies however. Someone wouldn't be able to siphon away ownership by using someone else's work. The person whose work is being used in the new work would be able to gain partial ownership of the new work. The author of the new work would only have ownership of their unique contributions, not ownership of the original work's contributions.
- ipaddr 5y agoPrince's twin brother or someone who looks like prince either naturally or through surgery could make a likeness claim. There might be a few holes in this plan.
- Jaygles 5y agoSure, it's not perfect, I'm just going through a thought exercise to try and reason if the hypothetical I'm suggesting might be more fair than the current system. A lot of people say there are holes/deficiencies in the current copyright system. And a "perfect" system that everyone would be happy with is likely impossible.
- exporectomy 5y agoIsn't that kind of how it already works? A software vendor licenses libraries bundled with their software and different people end up owning different parts of the final product?
- Jaygles 5y agoIn that case it's pretty clear who owns what due to the licensing involved. I was more thinking of situations where a person, say, photographs a building they don't own or didn't design. They couldn't have taken that photo if no one built the building. But they alone own the copyright to the photo. Technically anyone who helped construct the building contributed to the creation of the photo, but have no right to prevent the photo from being circulated, sold, etc.. Let me be clear on saying that that's how I think it should be. I don't think we should stymie productivity for creating art/music, even when you are using other's creations as pieces of your own creation. But it gets murky like the case described in the article where Warhol created his own work depicting Goldsmith's work, and the courts ruled it wasn't a fair use.