In a significant legal victory for Meta-owned Instagram, a three-judge panel with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the social media giant in a copyright infringement case. The lawsuit, initiated in 2021, involved photographers accusing Instagram of allowing outside websites and publications to embed images without their explicit consent, violating their copyrights.
The case stemmed from instances in 2016 and 2020 when media outlets Time and Buzzfeed respectively embedded Instagram images without seeking permission from the content creators, photographers Matthew Brauer and Alexis Hunley. The photographers alleged that Instagram’s practice of enabling third-party embedding without obtaining licenses exposed them to secondary infringement charges.
