A federal district court in New York held that a photographer failed to state a claim against digital-media website Mashable for copyright infringement of a photo that Mashable embedded on its website by using Instagram’s application programming interface (API). The decision turned on Instagram’s terms of use.
Mashable initially sought a license from the plaintiff, a professional photographer named Stephanie Sinclair, to display a photograph in connection with an article the company planned to post on its website, mashable.com. The plaintiff refused Mashable’s offer, but Mashable, nevertheless, embedded the photograph on its website through the use of Instagram’s API.
Instagram’s terms of use state that users grant Instagram a sublicensable license to the content posted on Instagram, subject to Instagram’s privacy policy. Instagram’s privacy policy expressly states that content posted to “public” Instagram accounts is searchable by the public and available for others to use through the Instagram API.
Continue Reading S.D.N.Y.: Public Display of Embedded Instagram Photo Does Not Infringe Copyright