“Appropriationist” Richard Prince is back in court. This time he’s being sued for copyright infringement in New York District Court by French photographer, Patrick Cariou, for having lifted photographs from his book, “Yes Rasta.”

This Wall Street Journal article gets at what constitutes “transformative” — the use of an original to create another work in a different medium.

As Daniel Grant’s story points out, the law is gray, particularly in light of the ease with which images can be copied and/or downloaded from the Internet.

Here’s an interesting story from the Dec. 6, 2007 edition of The New York Times about “artist” Richard Prince’s photographs of other photographs, which smells like theft to me, or at the very least, an absolute lack of any original creativity.

This image, shot by photographer
Jim Krantz, was re-photographed by
“artist” Richard Prince.

I’m dumbfounded by Prince’s blatant theft but I’m astonished that a collector would pay $1.2 million for a copy.

Photographer Jim Krantz erred by selling his copyright to Marlboro, which means he owns no rights to the images and therefore, has no right to file suit. That has to smart.

See the New York Times slide show depicting more of Prince’s expropriated “art”.

So Getty Images sells a photograph of Erik Curran, a soldier, to St. Martin’s Press.

St. Martin’s Press publishes it on the cover of “Killer Elite”, a book about a super-secret U.S. Army Special Forces team. The book is currently selling on Amazon at $16.47. Curran files a suit naming Amazon and Getty Images (for starters) contending he did not grant permission for his photograph to be used.

No response yet from the folks at Getty, so I’m not going to assign blame just yet, but if Erik Curran didn’t sign a release, Getty’s gonna have to sign a check.

Note to Getty: See Russell Christoff v. Nestle USA.