New blog post! 🚀
A few months ago a media org demanded a license fee for an open graph image I linked. I paid the fee because I was worried, but it raises serious questions about open graph usage on the web!
This goes through how it went and my thoughts.
Jul 22, 2025, 3:25 PM@accudio This sounds like the many patent troll stories. It makes me think... as a follow up article, you could post a similar image on a fake website with an easy to reach fake contact info but no easy way to trace it back to the real you. (You can do that right, you're an expert on website stuff, right?) Wait for the extortion note from this "media org." Ignore it. Report if they even bother to try to take you to court or if they also don't think it is worth the money.
Jul 22, 2025, 3:42 PM@accudio Incidentally, I have a friend who had one of his photos (of a chili-dog) used by a major newspaper website several years back. He wrote them a nice letter asking to be credited and paid. They asked how much. He asked for something like $500 and was promptly paid.
But what you experienced is so very-very different from a power-structure point of view.
@accudio "I published my Tweetback archive online with robots disallowed so it wouldn't be indexed by search engines" makes me wonder how they found it in the first place? One issue may have been that Open Graph with the article URL uses their licensed image URL, while your archive created an unlicensed image copy. #IANAL
@accudio you have to wonder how they picked up that you used the image if the pages you had it on were blocked by a robots.txt did I read that right? If I did then potentially they breached the Computer Misuse Act and are engaged in widespread criminal activity by their own admission?
Jul 22, 2025, 4:25 PM@accudio Love the thumbnail
Jul 22, 2025, 4:29 PM@accudio Hmm. They sound *very* dodgy. I definitely wouldn't have assumed good faith or truth on their part. I'd question that they own it at all. The "discount" sounds very fake to me. They sound like an extortion group given them demanding 16x more for licensing the same image than some other company (and therefore not "reasonable"), the tiny viewership of it, and your robots.txt.
I'd at least put T&Cs on your website that assert an equivalent fee for anyone ignoring your robots.txt.
@accudio isn’t their issue more that you were directly hosting the image? If you were embedding a tweet using the Twitter oembed API you’d be provided with an iframe that shows a page - hosted directly by Twitter - containing the image - hosted either by Twitter or the original news org.
@accudio not defending them at all, just thinking of the legal logic of it.
@accudio This is extortion, plain and simple, very sorry you had to deal with that… but that is a nice thumbnail. Thank you for sharing all of this with us, kind of important to know. 😅
Do you think tweetback copying the image locally was the downfall? i.e. if the image was hotlinked from the newspaper website itself, might their argument that you are using the image have fallen through? (EDIT: I see @awfulwoman has the same train of thought — same here, not defending this legal (mal)practice!)
@accudio @chriskirknielsen Whoa, this is a scary story!
@accudio this is messed up
@accudio reading this, it sounds like you got legally scammed by some bottom feeders who buy up or encourage the dissemination of IP, and then go fishing for folks they can scare into paying them.
I don’t blame you at all for paying, but I probably would’ve told them to pound sand.
@cferdinandi @accudio this is also kinda what I was thinking after reading it.
@cferdinandi
"buy up or encourage the dissemination of IP, and then go fishing for folks they can scare into paying them" - Yep, that's totally what I thought as well.
I'm not a lawyer either, but I've read a lot about copyright cases, and I would've thought what you did came under "fair use". Making comments about news items is exactly the kind of scenario that Fair Use was intended for.
@SmartmanApps @cferdinandi Fair use is a concept in US copyright law, and not all the world is the US. The poster in this case indicated they're in the UK, where the parallel concept is "fair dealing", which is significantly narrower.
@cjwatson @cferdinandi
I'm not in the U.S., but most of the court cases are (because most of them involve American AI companies), but we have similar concept here (if not same name). Basically reviewers have to be able to review movies, which includes showing clips from the movies, without getting sued for copyright infringement, write product reviews, etc.
@SmartmanApps @cferdinandi English law, unfortunately, doesn’t have a concept of Fair Use like the US does.
@eatyourgreens @SmartmanApps a few years back. I read a story from someone who had used a photo that was shared through a free photo sharing site like Pexels, and then after it had had been used in a bunch of places, was taken down. The copyright holder, then suit a bunch of people claiming they had violated their IP.
That’s obviously not exactly what happened here, but is the kind of thing I was referring to.
@eatyourgreens @SmartmanApps @cferdinandi we have "fair dealing", which includes
"Fair dealing for criticism, review or quotation is allowed for any type of copyright work."
@stevefenton @SmartmanApps @cferdinandi unfortunately, “Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of reporting current events is allowed for any type of copyright work other than a photograph.”
@eatyourgreens @SmartmanApps @cferdinandi you're absolutely right! It's literally the next half of the sentence 🤦♂️
@accudio Very very sorry you had to deal with being shaken down in this way.
The impression I get is that Tweetback produces an offline backup (i.e. downloads and stores) referenced images, and you published the archive including copies. You consider this an designed-for use case of the protocol. I really am sorry to say it, but you *must not* think this! It is very dangerous for your time on the web. [1/2]
@accudio It would be equally valid to say that img tags are expected to be downloaded (they are) so I should be able to republish any image I find online (you can't).
Note that I do not say it is invalid, just that it is dangerous. You must understand that there is a world of difference between publishing a copy of something and linking to it. You should think of all copyrighted content as basically on fire, and you cannot touch it except by passing the URL to a client. [2/2]
Unlock origin filter to remove ALL Open Graph code and images needed.
If open graph forces an image into my timeline I will contact lawyers and police.
Jul 22, 2025, 7:15 PM@accudio Oh wow that's interesting. Having some background (IANAL) when it comes to copyright what comes to mind immediately would be whether the tool you used downloaded the image so that it's now served from your website. E.g. "making available" (you're now hosting the image) vs "transient caching" which would be what OpenGraph intends with the original licensee (the newspaper) being the ones that make it available/host.
If not, and your website truly just displayed whatever Xitter does from the newspaper, I agree I cannot imagine this case having not gone your way. Well. At least in the EU. The UK is a bit weird now ;)
@accudio Absolutely terrifying, thank you for sharing this experience!
@accudio not the Lobster font! :D
Great blog post!
@accudio This sounds very close to what happend to @mauricerenck https://maurice-renck.de/en/blog/2025/how-to-lose-money-online-fast
@bastianallgeier @accudio oh man, sorry this happened to you, too. This is such a loophole and at least here in Germany some law firms specialized on things like this and unfortunately make good money with it.
Also it's very funny that both of us made similar article image decisions 😅
@accudio thanks for sharing this. It sucks, but I agree it’s hard to argue against their request.
Decided to take down my Twitter archive after seeing this. It’s nice to have a backup of all my posts from “the before times”, but having them live doesn’t do me any favours these days. Maybe a simple copyright disclaimer on the archive website would be enough?
@accudio Ps. £800 for a sick blog post like this is kinda a good deal tho 😄
@accudio Oh god. What a thing - and just from an archived twitter feed too... I'm so sorry!
Jul 23, 2025, 11:00 AMThank you for sharing! Something similar happened to a customer of mine. They are working with a lawyer now to get this sorted.
Jul 23, 2025, 11:09 AM@accudio This is actually kinda terrifying! You're making me think I need to configure my personal Mastodon instance to not show Open Graph embeds
Jul 23, 2025, 11:22 AM@accudio (Also, I just boosted your post so now my instance has taken a copy of your beautiful clickbait-y Open Graph image so hopefully you won't come and chase me for a licence fee for displaying it!)
Jul 23, 2025, 11:33 AMAs @jannis@jannis.io already mentioned: we are working with a lawyer, because the same thing happened to us. I can’t see any failure on my side, because another person released a licensed photo via open graph. That should never be the problem of the user who created the blog post, but from the person who pissed off a license