Parody Doesn’t Infringe

Copyright law in the US is often referred to as a ‘thin’ right, since it has tendency to protect only exact replicas of an original work. For photographs, courts will only protect a work if someone ‘slavishly copies’ it. See E. Am. Trio Prods., Inc. v. Tang Elec. Corp., 97 F. Supp. 2d 395, 417 (S.D.N.Y. 2000) (“There is a very broad scope for copyright in [new] photographs, encompassing almost any photograph that reflects more than ‘slavish copying.’”)

DERIVATIVE WORKS

A derivative work is a remix that samples an original piece, without attempting to ‘slavishly…