Flibbertigibbet

Gossip

Buddhista sent me a link to this Variety article on PerezHilton.com.

Variety: Perez Hilton blog having problems

In what may be the first hit against bloggerazzi star Perez Hilton's empire, his main webhost has dropped Perezhilton.com.

After numerous warnings against Hilton's (aka Mario Lavandeira) use of copyrighted celebrity images, the Oz-based Crucial Paradigm took the site off line; it was dark for a number of hours before it returned to the Internet with a different host.

Hilton is currently named in four lawsuits involving eight photo agencies for his alleged theft of photographs that appear on his site, one that's been a popular gossip destination for some 2½ years. Hilton frequently adds his own captions to the shots.

[...]

Hilton, who has contended that his actions fall under the fair use provision of the Copyright Act, did not respond to Daily Variety.

As I told Buddhista, I predict that Mr. Lavandeira is going to lose this suit. She and I agree that he SHOULD lose the suit.

From the U.S. Copyright Office:

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

I wrote back to Buddhista with my take on the law behind this.

On the first rule,he loses because his site does generate commercial revenue through advertising and there's no way that his site could be considered non-profit.

His defense might claim that his site is for personal use, but the copyright law restricts that as well and that argument doesn’t exactly apply to the internet which is more comparable to a broadcast transmission.

For the second and third rules, I think he loses because he is reproducing the photos in whole and his scribbled captions do not constitute any significant modification of the material in a way that could be construed as artistic, scholarly, or anything else that might even remotely excuse the reproduction.

Finally, his site is effectively a tabloid, which places it in direct competition with the market to which companies like X17 sell their photos. By reproducing the photos, he is eroding the market value because the print or commercial online tabloids will protest paying higher prices due to the competition presented by perezhilton.com.

Frankly, I’m surprised that he’s been allowed to persist for two and a half years.

Buddhist put it more simply:

I think he should lose. He is making money directly off of other people’s work. That is robbery.

Perez does usually have the latest celebrity gossip, but he is a bit to snarky and dark for my tastes, so I never read his site. I much prefer Pink is the New Blog.

Trent Venagas who runs "Pink" always gives photo credits and immediately removes any images upon request from the photo owner. (Of course, he really ought to get permission BEFORE using them.) But Trent is much nicer than Mario and I like that.

P.S. Suri Holmes Cruise is a demon. No baby is supposed to be that cute.