Blog slapped with huge lawsuit
Cory Bergman December 1st, 2006
One of the dirty little secrets of blogging (well, it’s not really a secret) is that most blogs post photos without rights clearances. Now PerezHilton.com, a popular entertainment blog, has been slapped with a $7.5 million lawsuit from X17, Hollywood’s largest photo agency. The key quote from X17’s press release on the suit: “(Mario Lavandeira a.k.a. Perez Hilton) is profiting through advertisements on his site (one-week ads on his site go for between $9000 - $16,000) and has gained relative fame from the success of his blog, which, X17 contends, is due in large part to the quality and quantity of celebrity images he posts on his site, many of which are owned by X17.” I hate to say it, but I think they may have a case, especially since PerezHilton is really more of a photo blog.
11 Comments Add your own
1. John | December 1st, 2006 at 11:46 am
“may” have a case? Of course they have a case. It’s theft. You wouldn’t use Reuters or AP photos on your news site without a license agreement to do so.
While not as big a deal, it always drives me nuts when I see bloggers cut and paste an entire article from my news site onto their sites without so much as a link back.
Sometimes they’ll put in our byline, but what good does it do me? They get ad impressions that should be mine.
2. Safran | December 1st, 2006 at 12:04 pm
In complete agreement with John. If you’re using other people’s content in full without paying for it or getting permission, you’re stealing it. If you’re making money off that stolen property, the owners have every right to that money.
X17 is missing an opportunity here, to be sure. As Liza points out at Culture Kitchen, there is a chance here to have a real photorazzi service for bloggers. Professional photo services cost a fortune. Something could be worked out.
There are currently 20 ads on the front of the site Using Cory’s numbers, that’s an average of $12,500 per ad or $250,000 a week. Perez is a $13 million-a-year industry? Even if we’re WAY off, there has got to be a way to share the money which will make everyone happy.
3. Everett W. | December 1st, 2006 at 12:35 pm
I’ve never posted a photo on any of my blogs ever. This is why. Who needs the copyright headaches?
4. David Johnson | December 1st, 2006 at 12:54 pm
I am shocked, *shocked*, to agree with you yet again, Saf. All news and photo services have opportunities to grow their businesses by selling to bloggers. The trick is to do it in a way that protects the value of the service to the current core customers. The newspaper industry took a hit and half back in the nineties when the AP started selling their content to online only operations, and the member collective has really changed since. It started the whole content as commodity issue. However, just following that example, newspapers number about 1400 in the U.S., and lostremoters know how many blogs there are starting up every… single…day. That is a market established content providers need to figure out. YouTube sure got to eat with the classes by selling to the masses.
5. Steve Safran | December 1st, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Don’t worry, David. It’s only a temporary condition.
6. threz | December 1st, 2006 at 9:37 pm
I don’t think they’ll win - although I certainly sympathize with them.
What about google images/news, archive.org etc. and a million other sites that cache images instead of hotlinking.
It makes me wonder where perezhilton is getting the images from in the first place though. X17’s site?
7. Peggy Archer | December 2nd, 2006 at 9:17 am
What’s not been mentioned is that although other blogs post photos without license agreements, when contacted by the photo agencies, the other bloggers will remove the photos willingly.
From what I understand, Perez hasn’t done that, hence the lawsuit.
I also agree that it’s a good idea to have a special license just for bloggers, although if these revenue estimates are true, I think Perez can easily afford to pay full license rates.
8. Eric | December 2nd, 2006 at 11:06 am
But in the real world, the obligation should not be on that of the copyright holder. It’s not okay to steal something just because you took it down after you were caught.
9. Stephanie | December 5th, 2006 at 9:21 am
Google images is a different story. If you see the way that works, when you search at Google Images, the thumbnails of the images show up in a block list form as a response, but when you click on the thumbnail, a set of frames pops up for Google.
The top horizontal frame has the photo thumbnail in it, the dimensions of the actual photo, the URL to the real site who hosts it, and a link to “see actual image.” The individual is then directed to the image on the real hosting server.
Most copyright court cases that have surfaced in the past 10 years have ruled that the Google-generated thumbnails, as small as they are, are a part of fair use in copyright laws because of their size…Google is directing the user to the real site, and those thumbnails really aren’t useable for anything besides an index of sorts.
As for other sites, there are oodles out there stealing images. And I agree with almost everyone above; when a person is profiting via the use of the images (or a song, or a work of art or writing or anything copyrighted of that nature), when they should’ve attained rights to it.
I hope X17 wins, for the sake of journalists now and in the future.
10. Lucy | January 14th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Wow, thanks for the excellent information!
11. MOJO | January 18th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Wow, thanks for the excellent information!
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