Gossip blogs sued for $7.5 Million worth of copyright infringment

Perez Hilton - who's got nothing on thesuperficial and idontlikeyouinthatway if you ask me - is being sued for $7.5 Million TMZ reports. It's Hollywood photo agency X17 that filed the suit - click her to see it (pdf) - and seven other photo agencies are also considering filing a lawsuit. X17's suit is a classic case of copyright infringement they say "knowingly and willfully used X17's images on his blog without permission from the agency, thereby violating federal law." and Perez responds with a classic blogger defense ' Nobody contacted me to take it down, so shut the fuck up' showing Perez' considerable knowledge gap about the point of copyright. In a release X17 stated:

"Mr. Lavandeira has regularly infringed on X17's large scoops. While it usually takes weeks of effort by a team of photographers and reporters to break a story, for Mr. Lavandeira, it has been as simple as a right-click."
"Mr. Lavandeira is profiting through advertisements on his site (one-week ads on his site go for between $9000 - $16,000) and has gained relative fame from the success of his blog, which, X17 contends, is due in large part to the quality and quantity of ceebrity images he posts on his site, many of which are owned by X17."

Since all publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right, especially in the blog world where more traffic equals more advertising money, Perez Hilton writer Mario Lavandeira might cash in on this and become even more famous, if not a strange poster boy for the vastly misunderstood creative commons. (with those kinds of friends you don't need enemies). Splashnewsonline even has a video of Perez being handed the suit. Seems Mario thinks he can make it go away by throwing it away. (direct link to .swf)