Slate’s Matt Yglesias purports to tell the tubes that an
Idaho man’s lawsuit against Buzzfeed for using one of his photos in one of
their made-for-virality posts without his permission is supposed to “kill my
faith” in intellectual property law.
The umbrage is there. But my faith in intellectual property
law has come out alive.
Yglesias seems to have trouble with photographer Kai
Eiselein’s charges of “contributory infringement” against Buzzfeed, since their
lifting of his clearly copyrighted photograph from his Flickr account has now
been featured on many other websites without his permission and without
remuneration. He says this claim is dubious, without really offering any proof.
(To be fair, he also knocks Buzzfeed’s claim that their use of his photo is
“transformative” and thus allowed under fair use rules as just as dubious. That
dubiousness I understand. The dubiousness of the contributory infringement
claim I do not.)
Yglesias theorizes about copyright law, but doesn’t explain
his reasoning but seems to think the solution lies in creative commons
licensing (which is great for folks like Buzzfeed, who obviously don’t want to
pay for the photos they use) but not for Eiselein and his ilk, who might
possibly want to be paid for the photos they take.
I don’t see much difference between what Buzzfeed does and
what Judith Griggs did, and Griggs got a righteous intertubes whacking for what
she did. Where’s the rage? Just because a popular website is lifting content
without remuneration (and, as far as I can tell, without even offering credit
to the artists whose work they’re stealing) does that make it okay?
Others like Andrew Beaujon at Poynter points to “the common
etiquette of the internet” not being reflected in intellectual property law.
Huh?
Here’s what Beaujon says about Buzzfeed in general, which
makes a bit more sense to me (There’s more on the etiquette of the internet
remark here as well):
The thing is, Buzzfeed regularly helps itself to photos from
other awesome, creative people for sponsored posts. And that sponsored content
[Buzzfeed founder Jonah] Peretti told [Guardian writer Heidi] Moore, accounts
for “nearly all the company’s revenues,” she writes.
So Buzzfeed gets eyeballs with their viral posts (they’ve
had mine from time to time) yet are just plucking stuff from the internet,
whether they have permission to use it or not, and, in some cases, is making
money off the stuff. No wonder Eiselein is upset, and litigious. (Why, explains
at The Guardian; can someone explain to me why I had to go to a UK website to
find a first direct quote from Eiselein.)
I’m just as guilty as the next fat person. Even though I
make no money with this blog, I do search the internet for images to go along
with my posts and use copious amounts of stuff that’s probably copyrighted
somewhere. That’s a violation of copyright law; I don’t have to make money when
I steal someone else’s stuff to be guilty. That doesn’t make what Buzzfeed is
doing right. And they’re getting paid for stealing.
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