Ted Nugent Concert Photographer Wins Reversal of Fair-Use Ruling

A concert photographer convinced the Fourth Circuit to reverse a ruling that a conservative news website’s use of a 2013 photo of musician and gun-rights activist Ted Nugent constituted fair use.

Larry Philpot established that all four statutory fair-use factors weighed against a federal judge’s finding that the Independent Journal Review’s use of his work was allowable, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said in a precedential opinion Tuesday. The use of the photo alongside a listicle titled “15 Signs Your Daddy Was a Conservative” wasn’t transformative, and the fact that licensing it wouldn’t have required a ...