Khloe Kardashian Is Being Sued By A Paparazzi Firm For Posting A Photo Of Herself To Instagram
People – Khloé Kardashian is facing a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against her by photo agency, Xposure Photos (UK) Ltd., who is accusing her of posting one of their photos to her Instagram account without their permission.
Xposure Photos alleges that “Kardashian copied the photograph” and posted it on her Instagram account on Sept. 14, 2016, but the image “had been altered to remove the copyright management information (CMI) showing plaintiff as the copyright owner of the image.”
“Kardashian’s Instagram post made the photograph immediately available to her nearly 67 million followers and others, consumers of entertainment news — and especially news and images of Kardashian herself, as evidenced by their status as followers of Kardashian — who would otherwise be interested in viewing licensed versions of the photograph in the magazines and newspapers that are plaintiff’s customers,” the documents read.
So let’s be clear here: Paparazzi firms are scum. Some of the guys taking photos out in the world might be regular punch-the-clock type dudes but they’re inherently so invasive and parasitic as a business that they all should go to hell. There are celebrities who tip paparazzi off to places they’re going to try to get publicity, a sort of win-win for them getting exposure and the photographers to get photos worth selling (ironically something the Kardashians have previously been known for). But paparazzi stalking a person’s home, waiting for them at airports, invading every borderline famous person’s life as an industry is just gross.
However…they’re dead right here. The only thing of value they create is a photo, a photo that companies will pay hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars for depending upon the shot. And if Khloe Kardashian posts that photo to Instagram, that photo immediately belongs to the world. Sites like ours would never deliberately use a paparazzi photo after getting sued into the stone age before (thank paparazzi firms for Guess That Ass’s demise) but if she posts it on Instagram, every website in the world can embed it, hundreds of thousands of her fans see it, the photo has zero worth at all to them. It’s weird as fuck that Khloe Kardashian can’t see an image of herself that she likes and throw it up given that it’s, you know, her face and body and existence. But on a purely legal level for as awful as paparazzi are, they’re probably right here. It should be some sort of quid pro quo thing, she lets them steal her soul for money, she gets to post any photos where she looks like she’s actually related to Kim and Kourtney, a win-win. But that’s not the deal they had, they’re right, so she’s fucked.
But still I really couldn’t wish enough bad things on paparazzi firms. When I had my old website before working at Barstool, we were about be acquired by a big media company I loved and wanted to work for. We had one paparazzi photo lawsuit pending because one of my writers blogged some paparazzi photos of Katy Perry and, as a condition of closing the deal with that company, we had to settle the lawsuit before we could get bought out. The day we settled with them, they tipped off ANOTHER paparazzi firm who heard we had money and we had also at some point used the photos of (this was a common tactic for paparazzi firms a few years back, photo agencies would identify websites using photos illegally and save the screenshots to sue them whenever they needed a revenue boost), they sued us the next day, and it killed the deal. Then after that my website ended up getting bought out by a company that stomped my dreams for a year and may never actually be worth anything aaand the company who would have bought us sold to some German publisher for like $500 million. The key takeaways here: Fuck paparazzi, I am sad whenever I think about this, and it still baffles me that Khloe Kardashian is hot now.
Honestly if she can just look like that after looking like OJ Simpson’s bastard child with her thumb shaped head for years, we should all just get shitloads of plastic surgery. Unreal what a skilled knife can do these days.