ARTICLE · 28 JULY 2020

The Hidden Risks Of Posting Publicly: How "Embedding" May Compromise Your Copyright

Minden Gross LLP

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Stephanie Sinclair, an American photojournalist, is widely known for capturing gender and human rights issues around the world. She recently received a disappointing verdict from a court in...

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Sepideh Nassabi

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Stephanie Sinclair, an American photojournalist, is widely known for capturing gender and human rights issues around the world. She recently received a disappointing verdict from a court in New York for her lawsuit against Mashable, Inc. and its parent company.

It all started when Sinclair declined to grant Mashable a license to use one of Sinclair's photos, for which the company offered $50. Nevertheless, Mashable found a way to include the photo in a published article by "embedding" it through Instagram's "application programming interface". The court found that as per Instagram's standard terms and conditions, which Sinclair accepted when she created her account, the photographer granted a valid sublicense to Mashable to use the embedding function to display her photo.

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