“Click, click, click and post” is a great lyric, but one photographer has objections to the practice.
TMZ reports that Ariana Grande is being sued by photographer Robert Barbara for posting photos that Barbara alleges are stolen. The photographer claims that the photos were lifted without his permission or any monetary transaction. Barbara is asking for the profits that Grande earned from the photos or $25k per photo (whichever is greater).
https://twitter.com/ArianaGrande/status/1030512508300414976
The photos in question were used to promote Grande’s album Sweetener, and were posted the day of the album’s release in August 2018. Grande has 154 million Instagram followers, and the photos were received over 3 million likes, so their reach was pretty big. Grande’s original caption for the photos was “happy sweetener day,” with no acknowledgement of the photographer. If there were any watermarks on the original photos, they were cropped for the version on Instagram.
Grande has also made headlines recently for her strict rules surrounding press photography during her Sweetener World Tour. Grande is one of the biggest pop stars on the planet and was recently announced to be the new face of Givenchy, so chances are even more people will be taking pictures of her in the upcoming months.
