Around the music industry, Brian May is known as a pretty nice guy.
That’s why it was obviously a BIG problem for May when his Instagram account was disabled for an inadvertent copyright violation.
Instagram, being a mainly visual medium, has policies in place to stop the uncredited/uncompinsated use of professional photographs. May says that he is always careful to make sure that the photos he uses are properly credited but one got through and the photographer took exception but, instead of pointing out the error to May, went directly to Instagram.
That resulted in May’s entire Instagram account being shut down and he could only get it back after correcting the situation.
May told the whole story in a post after reactivating the account:
Well this is what I woke up to. How RUDE ! I’m usually very careful to credit anyone whose photos I post – but in this case, at the end of the day, I must have forgotten. So, rather than write to me and say “dear Brian- you seem to have forgotten to credit me on this picture”, this person – Barbara Kremer is her name – reported me to Instagram and they not only took the picture down but disabled my whole account until I’d dealt with the issue – which took about 45 minutes of my time that I could not afford because the link refused to work on my phone. After, I successfully restarted my Instagram I was able to purchase active Instagram followers and get more following in matter of days. What an incredibly unfriendly act from you, Barbara ! You not only took my picture and are evidently exploiting my image, and making money off me without so much as a ‘by your leave’ – but you actually stop me using a picture of myself ! What a crazy world we live in these days. All I can say is that if you feel you were ‘violated’, I feel pretty violated myself. To the point where If I ever discover that you are at one of our concerts in future, look out, because, logically, I will be tempted to have you thrown out. Well, Good Morning !!! Bri
Readers were generally in agreement with May’s views, although a few called him out on using the photographers name in his statement. “Yes, poor judgement from her side. But I think you should know better than to hang and shame a regular woman, way below you in society, possibly exposing her for harassment or even death threats.”
