A news agency journalist has been landed with a £460 bill from stock pictures agency Alamy after posting a link to one of his own stories on microblogging platform Tumblr.
Barry Keevins, of Sussex News and Pictures, said he has no intention of paying the fee which he said appears to fly in the face of normal internet usage.
Tumblr is both a social networking and a blogging site. When users share links to stories it publishes an image and text snippet, similar to X. If such usage were treated as breach of copyright millions of people would face bills from rightsholders.
Photo agency Alamy owns more than 300 million images and frequently sends out claim letters when it spots cases of usage without permission.
The Alamy letter sent to Keevins asks for £400 to cover usage of the image in question and £60 as a case admin fee.
The letter directs Keevins to an online summary page of the case which warns him “it’s important not to ignore our offer to resolve this amicably”.
The agency is claiming for a picture of of Lewes Crown Court, in East Sussex, which illustrated a court report written by Keevins that appeared on Buzzfeed in 2017. It has sat on his Tumblr page ever since then.
Keevins said: “We’ve sued Alamy successfully a couple of years ago for doing what they think we have done. They were selling pictures which did not belong to the person who had supplied them.
“Their defence was they get so many pictures sent in they don’t have time to check the provenance of them.
“This seems like an attempt to get money out of gullible people and the sum charge of £400 is ludicrous. We have been to the High Court over this kind of thing and won payouts of £150 over use of this sort of image.”
Keevins said he has written to Alamy asking them “if they are new to the internet or if they are going after everybody who tweets a story with one of their pictures on it”.
He added: “Having successfully sued Alamy for copyright infringement before, I’m pretty amused by all of this and quite willing to have it tested in court.”
Alamy has not responded to a Press Gazette request for comment about the case.
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