BuzzFeed is (in)famous for its photo gallery stories. A guaranteed click-through engine, but what about the ethics (and legality) of the practice?
Last month, in an article about copyright and photos for PBS MediaShift, I wrote:
In a sponsored post from 2010, BuzzFeed appropriated a copyrighted photo published first on The Daily Mail. The photo on BuzzFeed was cropped to remove the photographer’s ID and copyright line. And someone slightly modified the color of the sky.
Last year, Alexis Madrigal delved into BuzzFeed’s practice of lifting photos from the web. BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti argued “fair use”:
But it’s not just sponsored posts (aka ads). It’s regular “stories” too, as this deconstruction shows.
Just say no to Buzzfeed. And for the sake of all that is holy, don’t share posts like these. It’s a corrupt business model. (We can talk about the Imgur and Tumblr business models another day.)
