I am something of a Copyright Nazi; I am not a great believer in "sharing" (often aka piracy), so I'm not coming to this from a neutral point of view ;)
Let's examine some use cases, all of them confined to material intended for public exhibition:
(1) unauthorised use of copyright imagery of a living "celebrity" as part of another creative work. To me, if this work is shown in public, it's wrong regardless of whether the resultant work is for profit, not-for-profit, whatever. I don't give a toss if it's a derived work, a new work, or whatever.
(2) unauthorised use of copyright imagery of a dead "celebrity", ditto. Also wrong - it's breach of copyright, and copyright is there for a purpose.
(3) Use of public-domain imagery of a living "celebrity". Fair game, as far as I'm concerned, within the framework of exisiting privacy/defamation/slander/libel laws. You might want to put a caption of "I SUCK COCKS IN HELL" over a picture of Madonna and post it as an advert on your local bus stop; she and her lawyers probably have a different opinion, and already have a legal framework for doing so.
(4) Use of public-domain footage of a dead "celebrity". Again, fair game, but if the estate/family/descendents of that person object, then go and have a fair fight.
(5) Parody/caricature/impersonation, using imagery clearly intended to mock a "celebrity" - no problem with this, existing legal frameworks clearly give sufficient protection through libel etc. laws.
no subject
Let's examine some use cases, all of them confined to material intended for public exhibition:
(1) unauthorised use of copyright imagery of a living "celebrity" as part of another creative work. To me, if this work is shown in public, it's wrong regardless of whether the resultant work is for profit, not-for-profit, whatever. I don't give a toss if it's a derived work, a new work, or whatever.
(2) unauthorised use of copyright imagery of a dead "celebrity", ditto. Also wrong - it's breach of copyright, and copyright is there for a purpose.
(3) Use of public-domain imagery of a living "celebrity". Fair game, as far as I'm concerned, within the framework of exisiting privacy/defamation/slander/libel laws. You might want to put a caption of "I SUCK COCKS IN HELL" over a picture of Madonna and post it as an advert on your local bus stop; she and her lawyers probably have a different opinion, and already have a legal framework for doing so.
(4) Use of public-domain footage of a dead "celebrity". Again, fair game, but if the estate/family/descendents of that person object, then go and have a fair fight.
(5) Parody/caricature/impersonation, using imagery clearly intended to mock a "celebrity" - no problem with this, existing legal frameworks clearly give sufficient protection through libel etc. laws.