The social media platform Humans of Bombay has become the talk of the town after it sued People of India over copyright infringement. The conversation sky-rocketed after Humans of New York founder tweeted about it.
The page, which was founded by Karishma Mehta in 2014 became popular for the kind of heartwarming stories that it shared about people who are heroes in real life. Recently, the page filed a lawsuit against People of India for copyright infringement. The platform claimed that POI, a similar photoblog website, allegedly copied its content, including its logo, tagline, and its Instagram story format. The lawsuit has been filed at the Delhi High Court, which issued a notice to POI on the matter.
However, HoB has come under fire after this news broke, and the founder of Humans of New York, Brandon Stanton reacted to the news. The founder criticized the website’s hypocrisy for suing POI when they themselves have copied his platform's name and the storytelling format. Brandon also took the opportunity to praise Humans of Amsterdam for staying true to his vision. He wrote, “I’ve always loved @HumansofAdam because Debra has stayed so true to the art, and has never viewed the stories that she shares as the “front end” of a business”
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Although Brandon hasn’t talked about it since his response stirred a lot of conversations. Hence HOB decided to share their side of the story. The photoblog shared a statement addressing him and stating how he ‘jumped the gun’ and should have gathered enough information about the issue before commenting on it. "It's therefore shocking that a cryptic assault on our efforts to protect our intellectual property is made in this manner, especially without understanding the case," a part of the statement read.
Ever since Brandon's reaction, netizens have been marching to X to call out HoB while also slamming the founder. Although HOB is under fire today, it's not the first time that netizens have raised their issues for the page. Many have been noticing the branded posts that HOB has shared, which also includes them doing a three-part series on Narendra Modi before the Lok Sabha elections while staying away from political content in the past. Many have also called their posts ‘sympathy porn.’ But the recent controversy caught as a wildfire and people haven't stopped talking about it. While people have been mentioning these changes in the past, they seem to have come up again right now in the light of the recent events.
This caused HOB to go on and explain that the legal suit was related to POI blatantly coping with their ‘IPs’ and not about them choosing to share storytelling content. Adding that they also reached out to the same people HOB had featured before. They wrote, “We tried to address the issue amicably before approaching the Court, as we believe in protecting our team’s hard work.” Sharing the notice issued by the Delhi High Court, HOB shared the screenshots of similar posts done by POI.
Here's the entire thread:
After all the debates online and waiting for the Delhi High Court's verdict, Karishma has finally released a statement on the same. She talked about her intentions about starting HoB and every reaction that she has been getting since issuing the copyright claim on the People of India. Here's what she had to share -
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This is all we know about the issue so far.
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