CBS sues New Yorker posting a screenshot of a 1950s TV show online

    CBS Broadcasting initiated one of the most original lawsuits in the history of copyright. The media giant is now suing a New Yorker who posted a screenshot of the series shown on American TV in 1958. The series is called "Gunsmoke" . In the lawsuit, the company is demanding compensation for potential losses in the amount of $ 150,000.

    It may well be that CBS will not succeed, because the defendant filed a lawsuit against the television company earlier, only for a different reason. John Tannen, who is the defendant in the case for posting a screenshot of the series, is an independent photographer. He and colleagues repeatedly sued companies such as CBS, NBC, and Warner Bros for using copyrighted photographs without permission from the author.

    Of course, the authors do not sue without evidence - the arguments of the plaintiffs are quite strong. But media companies have both money and time to drag out and complicate lawsuits. In some cases, they find “incriminating evidence” and file counterclaims, as happened in the described case.

    Tannen sued CBS Interactive in February this year. The lawsuit states that the company used one of its photographs to post on its website 247sports.com. The photographer has not received any payment for his work. It may well be that CBS has taken up this matter closely, deciding to “punish” the author of the mentioned photo.

    Be that as it may, now the photographer is getting acquainted with a four-page document, a lawsuit by CBS Broadcasting, where the company demands to punish the "copyright infringer" for posting a screenshot of the series mentioned above.

    Gunsmoke is one of the longest series in US history, which was released from 1955 to 1975. The company CBS, which released the series, believes that posting screenshots from it is a malicious copyright violation.


    At the moment, it is not yet clear which screenshot is in question. The only thing that is known is a frame from the episode “Dooley Surrenders”, released in 1958. Despite the fact that most companies do not pay any attention to the use of screenshots of their series or films and even welcomes this, CBS considers this practice to be a violation of intellectual property rights.

    "The defendant posted a copy of the frame of the episode" Dooley Surrenders "of the series GUNSMOKE on social networks without a license or permission from the plaintiff," the statement said .

    The most interesting thing in this case is the amount of the claim. CBS said the defendant’s actions caused her loss. The company finds it difficult to determine the amount of loss, so the plaintiff decided to estimate the copyright infringement at $ 150,000.

    As far as you can understand, the company does not hope to get anything from the defendant. This lawsuit is just a way to level out the influence of the photographer’s lawsuit in order to reduce the amount that he wants to recover from CBS. Moreover, even if the screenshot of an episode of the series is considered intellectual property, the levels of “guilt” in posting a screenshot and a full-fledged photograph posted on a commercial site without permission of the owner are very different.

    This is not the first time that CBS has gotten into strange copyright situations. For example, two years ago, the television company received a lawsuit in connection with the fact that in the series “The Big Bang Theory” the text and motive of the song “Soft kitty” are used. The author of this song, according to some sources, is a teacher from New Hampshire, who died in 2004. Her daughters filed a lawsuit against the television company, believing that the creators of the series had no right to use this song and melody in the series (and it is mentioned in one form or another 8 times).


    In addition, the lyrics were used in the form of inscriptions on souvenirs of the daughters of the song’s author. CBS then explained its actions by the fact that it received permission to use melodies and words from the company Willis Music Co, which published the work in one of its books.

    Well, as for the John Tannen case, it is unlikely that the lawsuits with CBS will end soon. Most likely, this epic will last a long time.

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