A New York court has ruled that usage of embedded photos by news outlets from an Instagram post is not a violation of copyright law.
In a case involving the tech news site Mashable and photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair, the District Court said Mashable did not violate copyright law when it embedded an Instagram photo from her in an article.
The case goes back to 2016, when Mashable put out an article highlighting the work of 10 female photojournalists whose work focuses on social justice.
The article also featured Sinclair's works and initially offered her $50 for the rights to one of her photos. When Sinclair declined to license the photo, Mashable embedded the pic from Sinclair's official Instagram account instead.
Sinclair went to court claiming that the tech news site had infringed her copyright.
Now, all along most courts had tended to view that a publication using a photo-embed code never stores the photo on its own servers. The courts have found merit in the argument that the publisher cannot be liable for direct copyright infringement since it didn't distribute or display the photo to users.
However, in 2018, a New York Federal Court, in a case involving American football player Tom Brady, contended that news sites had infringed copyright when they embedded his picture in their news stories. The judge held that the technical details of how the photo reached the user's browser was immaterial, as the news websites were making available pictures without the permission from copyright holders.
Taking into consideration this view, Mashable's legal team argued that Sinclair had granted a license to Instagram to use her photo when she uploaded it. Instagram's terms of service state that it has the right to sub-license photos to others.
Judge Kimba Wood, hearing the case, said Sinclair granted Instagram the right to sublicense the photograph, and "Instagram validly exercised that right by granting Mashable a sublicense to display the photograph."
