Am I violating copyright?

Judge rules embedding a tweet containing a Tom Brady pic in news stories violates the copyright of the guy who took the picture. Could this doom a favorite tactic of SJ.commers?

 

It's fair use here, for discussion.

 

Whew!

 

At first thought, I'm inclined to believe that this is a good thing.

The image in question is not merely one of Tom Brady that was purchased through a Getty Images or AP subscription; it was one that a layman took of Tom Brady during the Kevin Durant courtship weekend that he then apparently shared on Snapchat.

Without reading the entire ruling in the original story, the man did not necessarily mean for the image to be widely disseminated, and when it was, he (rightly) wanted remuneration from the outlets who used his photo without explicit permission.

What the ruling, if unchallenged and upheld (I'm sure there will be some challenge here), it basically reinforces private citizens' right to their images. Essentially, they should be compensated, as any other photographer would be, for the images as they are shared.

It seems like a number of news outlets have come to regard the need for permission as a requirement now, however; take all those requests from Fox Sports that were unearthed in the wake of the "pivot to video" saga and, more recently, all the news desks who scrambled to tweet at the students hiding in Stoneman Douglas the other day for the right to broadcast their video.

In theory, it should prevent organizations from ripping photos from non-employees for their own gain --- and they shouldn't have been doing that in the first place.