When Mr. Morel posted his photographs on Twitter, he made no notation that he was in any way limiting the license granted to Twitter or third parties or that he

When Mr. Morel posted his photographs on Twitter, he made no notation that he was in any way limiting the license granted to Twitter or third parties or that he was in any way limiting the ability of Twitter and third parties to use, distribute, or republish his photographs. Wow, this is really desperate on AFP's part if this is what they are relying on to justify their alleged right to use the pictures. It is way beyond doubt that a copyright holder retains rights to his copyrighted works even though they might be posted to the internet. In posting them, he gives at least an implied license to the internet host to display them publicly in the venue itself but it is utterly absurd to conclude from this that any third party can simply hoist them for his own profit. The fact that a sophisticated news organization would resort to such an argument strongly suggests that they have no defense to the photographer's claims. This issue came up on HN not long ago when the idea was floated for publishing comments from this site in a monthly magazine format and the question came up whether the person who sought to do so had to get individual permissions from each of the posters. My comment on why individual permissions were needed (with some legal citations for the copyright law) is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1262546 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1262546. The AFP lawsuit filed in Manhattan is for declaratory relief and for commercial disparagement. Most people, when victimized by others, have no idea that an adverse party can take their attempts to fight back and use it as a basis for suing them in a distant forum. Here, the photographer made claims that his copyrights had been infringed. This allowed AFP to file its lawsuit asking a court to consider the photographer's claims, to weigh them against its contrary claims that no copyrights had been infringed, and to render a judgment one way or the other on the issue (with AFP asking the court for a judgment that the copyrights had not been infringed). This sort of legal action can be used as a bullying tactic by a big player to force a smaller player to settle up or incur significant legal expense (on the other hand, for what appears to be a legitimate use of the same tactic by Google, see http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i8f1f42046a622bda0da37f7b3ad8a680 http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i8...). Here, the tactic has obviously backfired on AFP, since the photographer, in effect, responded with both guns blazing with counterclaims that put AFP at risk for some serious liability. By the way, this piece sorts through the legal issues fairly astutely. It is well written from that perspective (and otherwise).