"céline dion found our blog, and she didn’t like it. we just got a letter from céline’s lawyers that the blog has to be shut down. though this blog is well within the realm of ‘fair use’, i don’t have the money or time to get a lawyer to respond. the dream is over."The blog owner goes on to clarify that it was not Dion herself who found the blog and initiated contacted, blaming her "publicity and legal team."
The blog has been scrubbed of all but one ridiculous picture of Céline Dion (left).
Fair use is an exception to copyright law. It allows for limited use of copyrighted material without permission, for things such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. The term "fair use" originated in the United States, but similar exceptions exist in many other jurisdictions.
This certainly appears to be a case where fair use is a legitimate argument for using the photos on the blog, and it's a no less egregious example of the super-rich circumventing laws by virtue of their ability to spend a lot of money for the small size and insignificant nature of the blog.
There is, however, a bright side: a Google images search for "ridiculous photos of Celine Dion" returned 4,160,000 totally ridiculous results, while a Google web search for "ridiculous pictures of celine dion" returned nearly as many, most lamenting the demise of the site and lambasting the over the top singer.
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