>>10827546You are right in a sense. Japan DOES NOT have a fair use provision. Which is why Cover would have no problems at all from a legal perspective.
What he was referring to was this picture in question - the photographer had taken a picture of downhill skiers. Mad Amano, an artist, added a giant tire basically with the goal of criticizing skiing. The artist sued him and won in the initial judgement because it was used without the photographer's permission and did not preserve the purpose of the photographer.
On appeal, it was then initially dismissed on grounds of parody, which would normally make sense, yes? After all, the tire is clearly absurd. Not so after this escalated to Japan's Supreme Court, who judged that because the work is still recognizable as that of the author's, it infringes the author's 'moral right of integrity', which allows authors to prevent modification to their work which would be judged as injurous to their reputation. So, never mind "transformativeness", you won't even get away with any meaningful parody most of the time.
