As artists, we find the ‘Fair Use’ doctrine to sometimes be beneficial, but sometimes to be extremely disturbing. I guess illustrator Danny Quirk subscribes to the latter according to a post he made concerning Madonna using his work on her shows under that doctrine.

Danny has a series of illustrations called Dissections which shows medical sketches (the kind you find in old medical books), combined with living humans. This was his senior project for Pratt institute.

Danny claims that an artist called BessNYC4 [NSFW] pasted a photo of Maddona’s face on his drawing and that they were used in her social media. Any many young artists, Danny was first very happy for the fact that his art was so widely exposed. But then he realized that he was not getting any credit for his illustrations. Danny claims that he tried contacting Maddona’s agent and got no response.

Danny got even angrier when he discovered that those illustrations were also used in Madonna’s shows. Being annoyed he posted about it until his lawyer told him to take the post down as BessNYC4’s work was protected under the Fair Use doctrine for being transformative enough.

Danny got annoyed enough that he shared his frustration on his page which got thousands of likes, shares and comments. I am attaching his letter after the jump.

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