Oh boy... This backfired.
Last weekend Lady Gaga's song “Stupid Love” leaked onto the Internet and - as expected - it went viral and tons of people listened to it. Well, she took to the internet to call out the pirates in a tweet, but in the process, she used a photo from Shutterstock, without paying the license for its use. So, pretty much, pirating the image for her own use. You can tell because the image still had the watermark splash across it. Her tweet, below, said “can y’all stop” with two stock photos of a girl wearing a ski mask while listening to music.
Well, the company Shutterstock totally noticed and didn't hesitate to respond, pointing out the she was doing the same thing to someone else's art that she didn't want done to hers. They tweeted including the photog's page so Gaga could pay for the picture. I'm not gonna lie... It's funny as hell and I'm still giggling about it.
But wait... there's more!
Naturally Gaga fans stormed Shutterstock's Twitter but this isn't the juicy part. The best and juiciest part of this ordeal is the photographer who owns the image jumped on Twitter himself to share the image WITHOUT watermark for Gaga to use! He didn't care at all! Feels like a slap in the face to Shutterstock although they were defending the photog's work.
This whole thing has been hilarious to watch. What are your thoughts?