This was the case of the Molotov Man. An artist found the photo of a man throwing a Molotov cocktail. She painted her own work based on the photograph. Later she finds the photographer of the photograph wants credit for the source image and for the painter to pay to recreate to painted work. In my opinion, the photographer has a right to the photograph, but no right to the painting based on the photo because the painting is a re-imagining of the original work and not a direct copy of the work.
The same is said for in the other article, where writers take lines from each other’s works and utilize them in their own novel as text or title. They may be using the words as a reference to a work by another author they admire or they may simply like how that formation of semantics functions. They are not stealing from the other author, because anyone can put words together to form these sentences, but they are re-contextualizing a phrase in their own unique way.
We have already done this in class with the first project. Taking filmstrips and scratching and coloring the enamel, we re-imagined the film sequence and made it our own based on something that already existed. We did not simply pass off what was already on the strip as our own work.
We will do this again in the found footage/recycled project. We will take film or video and edit it with the purpose of creating a new context and meaning diverging from the original’s (most likely entirely).
So this question of ownership of image or phrase I feel is limited to the original work and that work as it stands. Any modifications to the original cannot be held accountable as infringing on copyrights because it is in fact not a direct copy and it is not trying to pass as the original work.
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