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Photo Cases Test Copyright Law and Embedded Tweets

By Raychel Lean
December 01, 2019

A New Yorker who settled a copyright lawsuit against several news outlets, including Time Inc., Breitbart News Network, Vox and Yahoo — over a photo he took of star quarterback Tom Brady and Boston Celtics manager Danny Ainge — has struck again. This time he's suing a radio station owner in Florida federal courts.

It's a case that could test the boundaries of an emerging area of copyright law, raising major questions about how media companies incorporate social media posts into online stories.

Plaintiff Justin Goldman uploaded the picture to Snapchat on July 2, 2016, but within hours it went viral, popping up on Reddit, then Twitter. From there, news outlets reported on speculation that Brady was helping recruit basketball player Kevin Durant to the Celtics. But when those news reports included the image via tweets embedded within online stories, Goldman sued claiming he'd never publicly released the photo or given the outlets permission to use it.

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