The pitfalls of photographs and social media

The blog of solicitors Collyer Bristow includes an interesting post about a copyright claim brought by a photographer against the well known model, Gigi Hadid. It is alleged that Ms Hadid circulated the photograph of herself to her millions of Instagram followers without seeking permission from the copyright owner (the photographer, Peter Cepeda). One interesting detail is that it is alleged a watermark carrying information on the ownership of the copyright was also removed from the photograph. In some cases people who recirculated the photograph were apparently misled into attributing the copyright to Ms Hadid and even to Instagram. The case is still to be decided but the scenario is an interesting illustration of how readily photographs can become separated from evidence of copyright ownership and the perils of reusing photographs on social media without permission.