Judge smacks down copyright suit over Instagram embedding

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A New York federal judge has ruled that the tech news site Mashable did not violate copyright law when it embedded an Instagram photo from photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair in an article.

James Grimmelmann, a copyright law expert at Cornell University, said that the ruling will provide a firmer legal footing for sites that embed third-party content. "It gives you a very clear basis for throwing out most of these cases quickly," he told Ars in a phone interview.

The dispute began in 2016, when Mashable published an article highlighting the work of 10 female photojournalists whose work focuses on social justice. Mashable included Sinclair among the 10 featured photographers and initially offered her $50 for the rights to one of her photos. When Sinclair declined to license the photo, Mashable embedded the photo from Sinclair's official Instagram account instead. Sinclair sued, arguing that Mashable had infringed her copyright.

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