August Image, LLC needs to stop acting like a copyright troll and immediately drop their lawsuit against Stereogum for images a sister site posted fifteen years ago. This awesome music website should not be sued out of business!

Destroying the independent websites that support and celebrate artists isn’t what copyright is supposed to be about. But in the age of AI, copyright trolls are using bots to scan old webpages and sue small websites that can’t afford the legal fees, much less the thousands of dollars to settle a suit.

For many of these sites, they no longer have the records for the photos they posted fifteen years ago. So even if they purchased the IP rights, or IP rights were not necessary for the image at the time of the post, they cannot defend themselves. All a copyright troll has to do is find an image that has IP restrictions today, and make a claim to scare the small business and get paid.

What these copyright trolls are doing is stressing and ruining alternatives to Big Tech and corporate media, which are already struggling to survive. A world where people who would build better places for artists and creators instead throw in the towel because of thousands in legal fees is bad for everyone. Everyone, except the tech and content billionaires.
We do not think that extorting or destroying small businesses is a valid way to make a profit. We demand that this lawsuit be dropped. We also demand that our lawmakers take action to stop the AI-powered weaponization of copyright laws by copyright trolls. We need to give more power and rights to each individual artist, and less to trolls.