Photographer and Kat Von D Go on Trial in Case That May Upend Tattoo Industry

This seems silly to me.<p>Transcribing a photo or painting into a tattoo seems almost necessarily transformative due to the limitations of the medium.<p>There are severe limitations on how dark black can get, ink fades which has to be factored in.<p>Even skill-wise, it&#x27;s a small subset of tattoo artists that are good enough to replicate a face well enough that it isn&#x27;t transformative by nature of not looking like the reference at all.<p>They&#x27;re not going to extort money from your average scratcher who couldn&#x27;t manage to violate copyright if they tried.<p>Even moving beyond that, in practical terms I don&#x27;t understand the economic reasoning here.<p>Tattooing is a heavily manual process. There is no route to &quot;industrial copyright infringement&quot; 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.<p>Combine a heavily manual process with a limited number of artists capable of producing infringing material and I just can&#x27;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?

Suggested viewing before commenting:<p>Tom Scott. “YouTube’s Copyright System Isn’t Broken. The World’s Is”. Chapter 2: “No Copyright Infringement Intended”. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;1Jwo5qc78QU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;1Jwo5qc78QU</a>

In practical terms, this really has nothing to do with the question of how transformative a tattoo is or is not as a derivative work.<p>The reason this hasn’t been a problem before is simply due to the nature of a tattoo - people typically only see the finished product after it was produced, long separated from the tattoo artist that inked it. Even with celebrities whose images are all over the media, a rights holder isn’t going to go track down Vin Diesel‘s tattoo artist to demand compensation.<p>There have been high profile tattoo artists, of course, but one assumes they have been aware of their visibility and thus by and large steered clear of exactly what Kat von D just stepped into.

She won the case. But it ain&#x27;t over - the photographer says his side planned to appeal.<p>from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rollingstone.com&#x2F;music&#x2F;music-news&#x2F;kat-von-d-wins-copyright-trial-miles-davis-tattoo-1234955355&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rollingstone.com&#x2F;music&#x2F;music-news&#x2F;kat-von-d-wins...</a>:<p>====<p>Jurors took less than three hours to unanimously decide her tattoo — as well as her planning sketch and four related social media posts — were not “substantially similar” to the copyrighted 1989 portrait of jazz legend Miles Davis at the center of the trial. The eight jurors also found that three other social media posts made to Von D’s personal and business accounts that also referenced the photo qualified as “fair use.”<p>====

When I got married (20+ years ago), my dad painted (oil panting on canvas) of our engagement photo that our photographer took, and wanted to display it at our wedding reception. I asked our photographer at the time if it was ok, and he mentioned that his painting was considered &quot;deriavitive work&quot;, so that he wasn&#x27;t violating his copyright. Yea, I get he&#x27;s not a lawyer, and this is just a single instance, but I hope the outcome for Kat Von D, especially since she didn&#x27;t get paid for the tattoo comes out the same.

portland has a similar issue, [Portlandia](<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Portlandia_(statue)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Portlandia_(statue)</a>), where the city commissioned it, $300+ thousand was paid to the artist, but he maintained the copyright, so no photos of it can be sold.<p>the statue is a reinterpretation of an existing city seal, but wants to keep its &quot;uniqueness&quot; by not allowing any other reinterpretations of it (nee laurelwood brewing creating a likeness of it (an illustration) for their beer cans).

Feels like there&#x27;s a joke in a photographer suing a tattoo artist for illegally copying the face of a dead third party.

This seems like silly trial. If I do a master copy painting it&#x27;s fair use. This is essentially the same as this tattoo, it&#x27;s fair use.<p>If Kat Von D, was tattoing a Nike logo on someone, then maybe there&#x27;s something there.<p>I&#x27;m suprised this got to trial.

I&#x27;ve always wondered how that worked. Like, if I tattooed Bowser playing a double necked guitar while riding a surfboard on a guy, am I not infringing copyright? Especially since I&#x27;m accepting payment for use of Nintendo&#x27;s copyrighted material? How have tattoo artists gotten away with this for so long?

Imagine getting a tattoo of your hero, then them pulling this crap on you. How many people have got tattoos of superheroes, brand names, etc etc. Not even Nintendo would go after someone for a Mario tattoo, and THAT says something.

“Upene the Industry” vs actually just paying for their sourge material is a bit much.<p>Why should it be considered so fundamentally different from TShirts. If you want to use the source material of someone, then pay for it.

I’m confused. It says she did it for free why is there a case?

I feel like I have a Doppelgänger somewhere who&#x27;s going to file an infringement claim against me for wearing his face.

this is more about tattoo artists copywriting their own work and that being reproduced by other tattoo artists

The judge will order the infringing works to be destroyed and the man&#x27;s arm will have to be cut-off.

Tattoo would be a very painful copyright violation &quot;takedown&quot;.

Well TIL about that photograph, and the name of the photographer who took it. It&#x27;s a cool photograph, possibly someting I might want to buy a copy of. The photographer should be thankful for the publicity.