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Spitzer Call Girl Threatens News Outlets Over Copyright
from the it-all-comes-back-to-copyright dept
Well, it had to happen sooner or later. With the press going nuts printing photos of the call girl at the center of the Eliot Spitzer affair, her lawyers are suddenly making some noise about how using these photos violates her copyrights on them. Most of the photos were taken from her MySpace page, which ties back to a recent story here about how the press is trying to determine what's fair game in a social networking profile when the subject becomes newsworthy. While some think that a fair use claim by the newspapers is weak, US laws on copyright do allow a fair use defense in news reporting, which would seem to apply to the photos. They're certainly not printing these photos for their artistic value.
The Associated Press, who has syndicated many of the photos in question has defended its use of the photos saying: "The Associated Press discussed the photos obtained from the MySpace page in great detail and found that they were newsworthy. We distributed the photos that were relevant to the story." Of course, as the What's Fair Use? blog points out, there's a bit of irony here. Just a few weeks ago, the AP used legal threats to get a photo-journalism criticism blog to stop using AP photos, claiming that it was copyright infringement. Apparently, the AP has different rules for itself than it has for others.
