{"id":2046,"date":"2024-07-30T14:59:36","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T14:59:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/music-photographer-sues-warner-in-latest-of-more-than-50-lawsuits\/"},"modified":"2024-07-30T14:59:36","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T14:59:36","slug":"music-photographer-sues-warner-in-latest-of-more-than-50-lawsuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/music-photographer-sues-warner-in-latest-of-more-than-50-lawsuits\/","title":{"rendered":"Music Photographer Sues Warner In Latest Of More Than 50 Lawsuits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tNeil Zlozower<\/strong>, a veteran rock photographer who\u2019s snapped images of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen, is suing Warner Records over a Facebook post featuring a picture of Tom Petty \u2014 the latest of more than 50 lawsuits the litigious photog has filed over the past decade.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a case filed in Los Angeles federal court, Zlozower accuses Warner of infringing the copyright to his photo, which depicts \u201970s-era Petty sitting in front of a record player. His lawyers claim the image was posted in 2020 to the official Facebook page for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, which Warner allegedly controls.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendant has not implemented adequate internal policies to verify copyright ownership before content use, indicating a gross negligence in legal compliance, which is essential for a company with defendant\u2019s reach, capabilities, and level of sophistication,\u201d Zlozower\u2019s lawyer Craig Sanders<\/strong> writes in the July 23 complaint.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tWarner\u2019s alleged failure to employ such copyright protections indicates \u201cde facto willful infringement\u201d by the company, the lawsuit claims \u2014 a key accusation, since under U.S. copyright law \u201cwillful\u201d violations can result in increased damages of up to $150,000 per work.<\/p>\n

\n\tA spokesman for Warner did not return a request for comment on the lawsuit\u2019s allegations.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case is hardly the first for Zlozower, who has also photographed Prince, Van Halen and countless other bands and artists over a decades-long career. Since 2016, court records show he\u2019s filed a whopping 57 copyright lawsuits against a wide range of defendants in federal courts around the country, demanding monetary damages over the alleged unauthorized use of his photographs.<\/p>\n

\n\tMany of his cases have targeted media companies, including CBS, Buzzfeed and Vice. But he\u2019s also twice sued Universal Music Group, once over an image of Elvis Costello and another time over a photo of Guns N\u2019 Roses. A different case targeted Ticketmaster, accusing the Live Nation unit of using an image of Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde. In 2019, Zlozower sued the guitar maker Gibson over claims that the company used a shot of Eddie Van Halen without permission.<\/p>\n

\n\tCopyright lawsuits over the unauthorized use of photographs on the internet are extremely common, with hundreds filed in the federal courts each year. The photographers and attorneys who bring them say it\u2019s their only real recourse against rampant online theft of their intellectual property, often by sophisticated companies that should know better.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPhotographers who are serious about protecting their copyright have no other choice but to file suit in [court] when an infringer refuses to negotiate,\u201d says David C. Deal<\/strong>, an attorney who represents photographers in such cases. \u201cPhotographers are the overwhelming losers in the digital age because they are properly compensated at a fraction of the rate at which their intellectual property is copied and used by others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut critics have questioned the tactics of some particularly litigious photographers and their attorneys, suggesting they\u2019re using litigation itself<\/em> as a business model \u2014 namely, by leveraging the threat of huge damages and prohibitive costs of to win as many small \u201cnuisance\u201d settlements as possible.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2019, a federal judge sharply criticized David Oppenheimer<\/strong>, a North Carolina photographer who filed more than 170 such lawsuits. As detailed by The Assembly<\/em><\/a>, Judge Martin Reidinger<\/strong> cited Oppenheimer\u2019s big demands and high volume of cases before saying that he \u201cappears to be using the copyright laws as a source of revenue, rather than as redress for legitimate injury.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA year earlier, a New York federal judge used harsher language about Richard Liebowitz<\/strong>, a Long Island attorney who filed thousands of such photo infringement cases. Judge Denise Cote<\/strong> labeled the lawyer a \u201ccopyright troll\u201d<\/a> \u2014 which she defined as someone who aims to win \u201cquick\u201d settlements that are \u201cpriced just low enough\u201d that it makes financial sense to simply \u201cpay the troll rather than defend the claim.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs evidenced by the astonishing volume of filings coupled with an astonishing rate of voluntary dismissals and quick settlements in Mr. Liebowitz\u2019s cases in this district, it is undisputable that Mr. Liebowitz is a copyright troll,\u201d the judge wrote in her 2018 decision<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn November 2021, Liebowitz was suspended from practicing law<\/a> in New York over a pattern of misconduct, including \u201cbehavior that made a mockery of orderly litigation processes.\u201d Earlier this year, he was disbarred by the state<\/a> for failing to comply with court orders and making false statements.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to federal court records, Liebowitz represented Zlozower in the vast majority of his copyright cases until 2021. In 2018, his firm filed nine lawsuits on behalf of the photographer, including one against Spotify<\/a> over an image of M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce on the band\u2019s artist page. In the year 2019 alone, Liebowitz\u2019s firm filed 14 more cases for Zlozower, including one against famed indie record store Amoeba Music.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Deal, many photographers face an \u201cimpossible position\u201d on the modern internet: Allow for-profit businesses to exploit their works for free, or \u201cinsist on being properly compensated\u201d and risk being labeled a \u201ctroll\u201d when they take action in court. But even within that context of mass infringement, Deal says, Zlozower\u2019s volume of litigation seems unusually high. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe idea of one photographer filing an average of 5-6 cases per year strikes me as excessive,\u201d Deal says, saying his own firm will only typically sue in a \u201cvery small percentage of cases\u201d after exhausting every other option.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of Zlozower\u2019s earliest cases was filed against M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce itself<\/a>. Represented by Liebowitz, he accused the band in September 2016 of creating t-shirts and other concert merch for its 2014 \u201cFinal Tour\u201d that were emblazoned with photos he had snapped of Nikki Sixx<\/strong>, Tommy Lee<\/strong> and other members during Cr\u00fce\u2019s 1980s heyday. But unlike many such defendants, the band actually fought back.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring two years of litigation, attorneys for M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce argued that the band had already paid<\/em> decades earlier for the right to use those images, and that it had \u201ccontinued to use them without objection ever since.\u201d Cr\u00fce also filed its own countersuit, accusing Zlozower of infringing their trademarks and likenesses by using the band\u2019s name and images to sell books and prints: \u201cZlozower never requested, nor received, consent to sell photographs depicting the likenesses of the band members of M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in 2020, the case against Cr\u00fce ended like many of Zlozower\u2019s have: in a confidential settlement and the voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit, without a final ruling on the merits. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed in court filings.<\/p>\n

\n\tZlozower and his current attorney, Sanders, did not return requests for comment from Billboard<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neil Zlozower, a veteran rock photographer who\u2019s snapped images of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen, is suing Warner Records over a Facebook post […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[215,317,593,2770,479,592],"class_list":["post-2046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-latest","tag-lawsuits","tag-music","tag-photographer","tag-sues","tag-warner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}