Industry News
The case of a photographer suing a celebrity after he or she posts a photo of themselves without the photographer’s permission is not a new one by any means. The most recent headline—”photographer sues rapper Nas”—has taken a turn, with another rapper getting vocal in a video and stating saying there needs to be new laws to protect celebrities against photographers.
Al Pereira, a photographer whose celebrity images grace the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, is taking the rapper known as Nas to court after he shared an image of himself and the late rapper Tupac on Instagram. Pereira took the photograph at a New York club in 1993 and then republished the photo in 2017, filing for a copyright at that time. On February 2 of this year, the photographer filed a lawsuit in the Central District of California. But the lawsuit drew additional attention last week after fellow rapper Snoop Dogg shared his thoughts on the case.
In a video shared by Worldstar on Instagram, Snoop Dogg called for new laws to protect celebrities. “You are borrowing my likeness, how are you going to sue Nas for a picture that he in?” he said in the video. “We need some new laws to help us as artists man, because there are a bunch of mother f*ckers selling pictures with my face on it and I don’t get sh*t because they took the picture.”
[Read: 6 Copyright Infringement Cases Photographers Should Know About]
The controversy is one that’s been pulled in and out of the spotlight after several recent cases, where celebrities were sued for sharing photos of themselves, including LeBron James, Lisa Rinna, Dua Lipa, and Gigi Hadid. U.S. copyright law says that the photographer owns the rights to the photos that they take unless another legal agreement is in place, such as in the case with some contracts with photo agencies.
Snoop Dog’s choice of words is an interesting one, calling for laws to protect artists but referring to the artists of the music industry. Snoop Dogg’s net worth is estimated at $150 million, which makes him one of the wealthiest rappers in the industry. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the average annual wage of a photographer at $42,770.
In the Nas case, Pereira said that he makes his living licensing his images; by posting the image to Instagram, Pereira says that Nas is both profiting from the image and decreasing the value of that photograph.
Aaron M. Aarce Stark, a founding attorney of Stark.Law, explains that both the photographer and the person in the photograph have rights. The photographer, Stark explained during an interview last year, owns the copyright and the photo itself as intellectual property. However, he added, the person in the photo does have a right to publicity. Some states, including California, have a Right of Privacy law, which requires permission from the person in the photograph before an image can be used commercially. The Right to Privacy law only applies to commercial images. However, Stark notes that what defines commercial isn’t always clear—a photo on a photographer’s website could be considered advertisement for the photographer, for example. Want more insight on photo copyrights? Read more here.