Right: copyright on embedded tweet

new york - News sites that embed tweets can thus infringe the copyrights that rest on the images shown. That remarkable statement was made by a federal judge in the American state of New York on Thursday.

The case was about a photo of American football player Tom Brady. The sportsman was there to see with the coach of the Boston Celtics, presumably because he helped the basketball team to attract a player. The photo was taken in the street by Justin Goldman, who distributed the image via Snapchat. One of his followers there placed the snapshot on Twitter.

Among others, news sites Time, Breitbart, Vox, Yahoo and The Boston Globe decided to embed that tweet in a story about the possible transfer of the basketball player. Goldman then sued them for violating his copyright. The judge ruled that he has a case. By choosing to show the photo on their website, the news organizations in their judgment would have violated Goldman's rights.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the verdict does not mean that Goldman has won the case. The judge ruled that the news organizations can not argue freely on the grounds that they only shared photos that had already been published via Twitter and are stored on the social media company's server. They had suggested that argument to end the lawsuit early.