Bangalore: The first time in internet history, two news organizations have landed in hot soup over using twitter images. It is turning out to be one of the first big tests of intellectual property law involving social media.

The US District Judge of Manhattan, Alison Nathan, ruled that Agence France-Presse and The Washington Post infringed on the copyrights of photographer Daniel Morel.  The media companies used photographer’s pictures that he took at the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, reports TOI.

The law suit was initiated by AFP in March 2010 to get a ruling that it did not infringe copyrights after Morel accused the former for improper use of his pictures. Morel countersued AFP, Getty and The Washington Post.

While AFP defended by saying that ‘once the images appear on twitter they are freely available’, the judge said , the service terms do allow the reposting and rebroadcasting of users' images in certain circumstances, such as "retweeting" them, but it did not allow the news agencies to publish the images without prior permission by the owner.

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