Saturday, January 19, 2013

"News flash for the media: You can't sell photos grabbed from Twitter."

That's the headline from Ars Technica, regarding photojournalist Daniel Morel's victory in his copyright lawsuit against news organizations that used his photos of the 2010 Haiti earthquake after they were posted on Twitter.  The decision is here.

Eric Goldman has everything you need to know about the decision.  His bottom line:

"AFP should have looped in the co-defendants and written a check from day one. After furiously litigating the case for almost two years, it's definitely going to be writing a check to Morel. ... [T]here are a ton of interesting issues addressed in the order, but the simple takeaway is something we already knew: stuff that's posted online is not necessarily fair game for recycling, especially not photos ...."