We Were Rebels Once, and Then the Lawyers Came
When I started blogging in 2002, the internet still felt like stolen territory. Nobody over thirty understood what any of it was. We pooled AOL trial CDs and went on digital hunts. We posted everything we loved—images, music, videos—not to build a brand, not to monetize, but because sharing the things that moved you was how you found other people who felt the same way. It worked. It was enough.
The internet was home. Free, ungoverned, slightly feral. Nobody telling you what you could or couldn’t do. That didn’t make us criminals—it made us people with passions and somewhere to put them.
Cut to 2015. The erosion happened slowly, then all at once. First came the youth-protection notices: the human body, apparently, is not suitable content for anyone under eighteen, and this is Germany, so you comply. We worked with a content officer, stripped anything that could be called provocative, and carried on. No choice. Germany and so on.
Then the cease-and-desist letters started arriving. Lawyers demanding several thousand euros per letter because we’d posted photographs we didn’t originate—the exact thing that happens tens of millions of times a day on Tumblr. We deleted the images, signed the declarations, promised not to do it again. No choice. Germany and so on.
The rebel chapter was over. From then on we asked permission before publishing anything made by someone else. We watched American blogs operate freely under fair use while we sent polite emails into the void and waited for replies that often never came. When permission finally arrived, the story had already moved on. We accepted it. No choice. Germany and so on.
Then something happened that left me genuinely speechless. Years ago I’d made informal arrangements with photographers like Merlin Bronques, Mark Hunter, and Moni Haworth: I could use their work freely as long as I credited them properly, with a link. I did. It worked. Everything was fine.
Then a young woman wrote to me: Dear Mr. Winatschek, I have been dismayed to repeatedly come across the following link in recent days. It shows a photograph of me and my former flatmate that we never authorized for public use. I ask you to remove it from the site immediately. You may treat this email as a formal legal notice. I will be pursuing legal action regarding this publication, as I feel my personal rights—my right to my own image—have been seriously violated.
The photograph was by Merlin Bronques, used to illustrate a piece about a Berlin flat-share blind-date party. I deleted the article and the image immediately, then wrote back explaining that the photographer had given explicit permission to use his work. I’m still waiting to hear whether she pursues it further.
But here’s the implication: it’s no longer enough to get permission from the photographer. To be fully protected, I’d also need individual written consent from every person visible in every photograph. Not just the person who made the image—every face in it.
Take Yuki Aoyama’s Solaryman series, which went internationally viral a short while ago. Rather than just running it, I contacted Yuki directly and asked. Two days later he replied with high-resolution files and a yes. I posted it feeling good about the process, even though the news cycle had already moved on. That good feeling lasted until now—because this isn’t the first time someone has objected to appearing in a photograph I had every legal right to publish. If this becomes the standard, then for a series like Solaryman I wouldn’t just need Yuki’s permission. I’d need written consent from every father and every daughter in every frame.
That’s impossible. And even if I somehow managed it—weeks of correspondence, months—the post would be worthless by then. Everyone would have seen it elsewhere already. In the United States, for instance, where fair use exists and is treated as a feature rather than a loophole.
We’re now in a situation where even running press photos requires checking with multiple contacts at multiple agencies, and even then there have been cases where a photographer or agency decided two years later that a specific image was suddenly "problematic." I’ve been there. I have the emails to prove it.
We were rebels once, in a time when the internet felt wide open and full of possibility, a place where enthusiasm counted for something. Now you can be served a legal threat faster than you can type the word copyright. If the law doesn’t change, it won’t just be this journal that suffers—the entire ecosystem of online publishing here will keep draining of color until there’s nothing left worth reading. I don’t think anyone actually wants that. I’m just not sure anyone in a position to stop it is paying attention.