Real Housewife Lisa Rinna is being sued for posting photos of herself—and not by the public who’ve had enough of the Housewives. I’m Amy E. Feldman.
Reality TV star Lisa Rinna is being sued for over a million dollars for posting pictures of herself on Instagram. Photo agency Backgrid filed the action for copyright infringement, saying they own the copyright of the photos posted by Rinna, and that by using them on her Instagram she hurt their chances to profit because she distributed those pictures so widely.
While much of the public has had it up to here with the publicity hounds parading as celebrities, it is kind of hard to see how Rinna could be faulted for uploading pictures of herself. The answer is: copyright law. You don’t have an expectation of privacy when you’re in public, so you can be photographed. It’s the photographer who owns the copyright to a picture, not the person in it. The good news for Rinna might just be that now the court system is a whole new venue to get publicity.
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