-By Warner Todd Huston
It is one of the dangers of the Internet age and Buzzfeed is only the latest website to find itself being taken to court, sued for $3.67 million for using a photograph without the permission of the original owner of the image.
While perusing the Internet, photographer Kai Eiselein stumbled across one of Buzzfeed’s ubiquitous photo essay lists, one titled “The 30 Funniest Header Faces.” The entry from 2010 gathered 30 images of soccer players caught by the camera lens making funny faces while butting heads against a soccer ball.
Eiselein was perturbed, though, to find one of his own photographs featured as one of the 30 amusing images Buzzfeed used. The photog was perturbed because he had uploaded the image to his Flickr feed and taken the time to note on all his images that his photos were “All Rights Reserved” in an effort to keep people from stealing them. As it happens, Buzzfeed simply took the image and never contacted Eiselein for permission to use the image.
Eiselein sent Buzzfeed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice and the site quickly acceded to his demand. So, upon visiting the Buzzfeed page in question now, visitors are greeted with “The 29 Funniest Header Faces.”
Despite that Buzzfeed removed the image, though, Eiselein filed suit in a New York court seeking a whopping $3.67 million.
The lawsuit states that Buzzfeed is negligent on copyright issues as its very business model.
Buzzfeed, Inc. actively encourages its users to share content, regardless of whether or not that content is owned by, or licensed to, Buzzfeed. The plaintiff asserts that Buzzfeed, Inc. is responsible for 61 contributory infringements upon his photograph.
Copyright violation on images is all too easy to perpetrate, of course. So many people just grab photos to re-use from where ever they find them on the web that it is hard to act the copyright cop. Anyone who has run a webpage for a prolonged period of time is likely to get at least one demand that a photo be taken down.
Sometimes even attributing a photo isn’t enough to avoid questions on usage.
This isn’t the first time that Buzzfeed has been taken to court over misuse of images. In 2012 a Florida-based photo agency sued Buzzfeed for using photos without first asking permission of celebrities it owned the rights to.
This issue is one of the many issues that the law is still trying to settle where it concerns the Internet age.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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