Singer Miley Cyrus is being sued for copyright infringement after she posted a photo of herself taken by the paparazzi on her Instagram account.
The photographer, Robert Barbara, filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court on Friday.
Barbara filed a similar lawsuit against pop star Dua Lipa last month. He has previously sued Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber on the same grounds, both of whom settled confidentially.
Barbara’s complaint says that, just like Grande and Bieber, Cyrus posted the image without a license or permission. He argued that because of her “immense presence” on Instagram, where she has 169 million followers, it “crippled, if not destroyed” his ability to license the photo.
The lawsuit does not specify what he is seeking in damages, but fixed “statutory” damages can be as much as $150,000.
Khloe Kardashian, Liam Hemsworth, Gigi Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, LeBron James, Katy Perry, and more have all faced similar lawsuits in recent years — for posting photos of themselves taken without their permission.
“The misunderstanding with celebrities [is] just because they’re the subject of a photo doesn’t mean they have any ownership rights in it,” Nancy Wolff, an attorney at the law firm Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard, told Billboard in June. “Not everyone really understands the difference between rights of privacy and publicity and copyright.”
Ratajkowski had attempted to fight back against the “exploitive” paparazzi who had taken a photo of her outside a Manhattan flower shop. She had posted it to her Instagram stories, which disappear in 24 hours.
In court, the model argued that her use of the photo constituted fair use of the image.
“The protections afforded by the Copyright Act are only available to a party ‘who has actually formed the picture by putting the persons in position, and arranging the place where the people are to be,’” she wrote in a motion for summary judgment, which was obtained by the Hollywood Reporter. “This is true even if the plaintiff holds a registered copyright.”
The Hollywood Reporter explained, “under copyright law, photos don’t qualify for protection if they lack ‘artistic merit’ and the content of the images don’t ‘give the court any reason to believe that any ‘creative spark’ was required to produce it.’ Photos that are purely descriptive, defined as merely capturing things ‘as they are,’ are similarly not afforded copyright protection.”
Ratajkowski argued that there was no creativity, as he had just photographed her on the street.
Though the judge appeared to be favorable to her arguments, Ratajkowski ultimately ended up settling out of court in an undisclosed agreement.
