Particularly when it comes to photos, the difference between blatant infringement and “fair use” is not easy to define - although many armchair legal scholars (including many of BuzzFeed’s critics) would like to pretend that it is. The problem for BuzzFeed, and for plenty of other online-media players, is that the line they need to toe when it comes to copyright infringement is so blurry. Web sites should start with the notion that if they cannot find a photographer's contact info for a picture, it is unavailable for use. But if the site continues to run into allegations of copyright infringement based on the pictures or other content it uses in these sponsored posts, that could make it somewhat harder to sell clients on the idea - and with its recent venture funding, the pressure on the company to toe the line is only likely to increase. But it wasn’t just a regular post - the collection was created for Samsung as part of BuzzFeed’s “native advertising” or sponsored content program, where the site creates a post and tries to get it shared by users in the same viral way that its regular posts are (the post, entitled “14 Amazing Photos That Were Totally Not Photoshopped,” appears to have been removed but there’s a Google cache version here).Ĭreating sponsored content with borrowed imagesīuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti has made it clear that he sees this kind of native advertising content as the future of digital-media monetization (something he will be talking about as part of our paidContent Live conference on April 17 in New York City). In the latest incident, the site put together a collection of images that were created using the long-exposure function on some cameras.
It’s an issue that is likely to become even more urgent as BuzzFeed continues to grow. But a blowup with the online community Reddit over the ownership of some of the pictures that BuzzFeed used in a recent post has reignited a debate over the way the site uses such images.
BuzzFeed’s impressive growth - capped off by a recent $19-million venture-financing round - is a testament to the site’s ability to find and package “viral” content on a range of topics, from heartwarming photos of charitable acts to a collection of cookie jars shaped like dogs.