It was bound to happen to a Blogger at some point, but a $7.6 million dollar lawsuit? I was even amazed by that amount. Hilton is being sued by X17 Inc., a photo agency known for its pictures of celebrities in embarrassing moments, citing that Hilton has committed copyright infringement.
To be honest, Bloggers copy pictures from sites all of the time. One of the most copied sites would be Getty Images in the Fashion Blogosphere. Many fashion and beauty Bloggers have often talked about their fear of getting caught and how some cite Getty as their image source while others do not, but all in all most feel that they can use the excuse, “Everybody else is doing it.” With threats of litigation and now an actual multi-million dollar lawsuit in place, maybe many Bloggers will be thinking twice. However, watching Headline News today on CNN, the newscasters still concurred that Bloggers will fall back on the above mentioned excuse.
The Budget Fashionista, a highly respected fashion Blogger with a recently published book of the same name (who I happen to be a fan of), was threatened by Neiman Marcus when she wrote a post about a product that they sold and used an image from their website. She happened to write in her post about other products from companies Neiman Marcus considered a competitor. They certainly didn’t mind her mentioning their store and using their image (free advertising for them), but they got angered when they were not the sole company named in the post. So she was sent the letter and told that she was not allowed to use the image posted if she was going to also mention competitors. Since she wasn’t going to let Neiman Marcus bully her into not mentioning competitors, she simply took down the image and the competitor in the post remained up.
Heather Armstrong, the writer behind the very popular blog Dooce, was also slapped with a lawsuit by Kensington Publishing Corporation who said she had a binding (oral) agreement to write a book for them. Armstrong says she was unhappy with the contract so she declined to sign her life away and was then sued for it. She ended up settling the lawsuit.
So what’s next for Perez Hilton, and really the rest of the blogosphere, who adds pictures to their blogs to increase its attractiveness and really to drive the point home about whatever they are posting about? Will more Bloggers continue to walk on eggshells and copy images from other sites without permission or will we start to see a change and see more photo credits?
What’s your opinion?
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