Mail Online is being sued by a news agency for payment over a supplied picture of a young Iranian woman beaten to death for not wearing a headscarf.
The publisher is arguing that NewsX, a Community Interest Company that trades as Newsflash, must prove it owns the copyright of the image of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
In court filings NewsX argues that the Iran-based copyright holder of the image would be at risk of reprisals from the country’s regime if they were identified.
It claims that by disputing payment Mail Online is undermining the economics of original newsgathering and making it less likely such stories would be uncovered in future.
Mail Online publisher DMG Media says it plans to “vigorously contest” what it describes as a “baseless claim”.
The story of Amini was first reported by Mail Online on 16 September 2022 using photos and information sourced from social media.
NewsX says it was already independently investigating the story and sent its own version out for use by publishers the same day using photos and information it says it sourced and verified using its own correspondent in Iran, including the image at the centre of this claim.
The initial Mail Online story contained the following photo which was sourced from Facebook and includes a green mark down the left-hand side.
NewsX sent out a higher-quality version of the same photo which it says it sourced independently and verified. This image was used widely by publishers and credited to Newsflash.
Other publishers and news agencies subsequently sourced the same image independently of NewsX. But NewsX says it can prove the Mail used the version of the image it sourced and verified because of a tiny change made to the background of the photograph (an additional leaf).
The legal claim filed by NewsX at a county court in Kent says: “In this case, when Newsflash requested payment on published work that included this mark, Associated Newspapers refused.
“Their argument was that unless Newsflash had an exclusive licence for the material, then anybody who downloaded the content could decide to take it to publish or resell.
“With respect, this claim perfectly illustrates why what they request is not possible in practice and why agencies need to be paid when they have established proof of work rather than copyright.
“Someone in Iran who has the copyright for material later licensed for use in a regime-critical story in foreign media would have a genuine risk of reprisals. Indeed, if news like this is only published when a licence is available, then many important stories like this would not see the light of day.
“Accepting the Mail Online position means supporting a growing network of syndication agencies that employ no journalists and do no verification or checking on the material they are nevertheless often licensed to share.
“The NewsX case, therefore, comes down to this: if Associated Newspapers, or one of their third-party suppliers, had indeed taken the image directly from the victim’s family as they claim and had also filed six days before Newsflash, as they also claim, then the content could not possibly have had the Newsflash copyright mark.
“However, on at least seven occasions, it had the secret copyright mark on the images published, proving proof of work…”
Like many news agencies, NewsX mainly works by sending stories and pictures to news outlets on a speculative basis and then charging if they are used.
NewsX is seeking £1,110 in compensation including payment for seven uses of the image at £40 each, £250 for recovery costs and £500 for lost sales/improper credits.
NewsX is owned by Michael Leidig who in April 2024 announced the closure of his agency network, blaming falling newsroom budgets.
Associated Newspapers says in its response: “The claimant cannot demand payment for the use of a photograph for which they neither own the copyright nor act as the exclusive management for the copyright owners of the image.” It says it has paid NewsX £40 for one use of the image in question.
A spokesperson for DMG Media said: “The social media image around which this case centres was supplied by a number of news agencies, none of whom asserted copyright. Nonetheless, each separate version used was attributed correctly according to its origin.
“Mr Leidig’s agency is not owed any payment by Mail Online for the image and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves against his baseless claim.”
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