Lil Nas X can’t be sued by an Instagram user who claimed the superstar stole his distinctive “poses” and used them in his own posts, federal appeals court says – ruling that the dispute images “share few similarities” and Lil Nas likely never saw them anyway.
Rodney Woodland, a freelance artist and model, claimed in his 2022 lawsuit that the “Old Town Road” rapper (Montero Lamar Hill) had illegally replicated several provocative photos in which Woodland struck elaborate poses while partially nude.
But in a ruling Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit says that the dueling sets of Instagram posts share only a few scattered similarities that didn’t legally add up to copyright infringement.
“Hill’s photograph shares almost nothing in common with Woodland’s,” Judge Kenneth K. Lee writes, analyzing two of the images. “The photos both depict a Black man folded in on himself, but the similarities stop there. The objective elements in the photos—the men’s poses, colors, lighting, backgrounds, etc.—are different.”
The appeals court also rejects Woodland’s lawsuit for an even simpler reason: That Lil Nas had likely never seen the images he was accused of copying. That issue – known as “access” in copyright law – is a crucial component in any infringement lawsuit.
“It is not enough to simply allege that [Lil Nas] is an active user of Instagram and thus had a reasonable possibility of viewing Woodland’s photos,” Lee writes for a three-judge panel. “There are over a billion users and many more posts on Instagram. The mere fact that Hill uses Instagram and that Woodland’s photos are on Instagram raises no more than a bare possibility that Hill viewed Woodland’s photos.”
Attorneys for both sides did not return requests for comment on the ruling on Monday.
Woodland sued Lil Nas in June 2022, claiming the rapper had ripped off 11 of his copyrighted photographs, illegally copying “original and unique elements” of them including “poses, colors, lighting and coloring.” The images all feature Woodland and Nas naked with their genitals obscured, either by their pose or the use of editing elements.
A federal judge dismissed the case in 2023, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed that ruling on Friday. In its written opinion, the appeals court included side-by-sides of each disputed pair of photos and detailed why each of Nas’ posts were not improper.
“The commonalities go no further than the depiction of a man reclining on his side with certain body parts strategically covered — a common pose in photos of male models and actors,” the court wrote about one set of images.
Several of the disputed photos featured both Woodland and Nas “draped in chains.” The court said that was a clear similarity, but not one that trigger’s copyright law’s protections for creative expression.
“The idea in each of the photos is the same — the provocative image of a Black man in chains,” the court wrote. “But that idea is not protected — indeed, it is a common motif in many pieces of art. Only the expression through the selection and arrangement of objective elements receives copyright protection.”
Friday’s ruling carries added importance because it is a so-called precedential ruling, offering new case law on the issue of copyright “access” in the era of social media.
The court said the rules had involved in an analog world and that Instagram and other platforms had made it “easier than ever” for copyright works to be widely disseminated. But the court also warned that accusers would still need to prove that an alleged infringer had a good chance of seeing their work — and that none of Woodland’s posts had recieved more than 75 “likes” on Instagram.
“Social media and other digital-sharing platforms could make it easier for plaintiffs to show that defendants had access to their materials —but only if they can show that the defendants had a reasonable chance of seeing their work under that platform’s algorithm or content-sharing policy,” the appeals court wrote. “That is a big “if”— and, as explained below, Woodland has fallen short here.”
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