IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—E.D. Ill.: Chicago violated a videographer’s copyright by posting videos about a police-protestor clash, (Apr 1, 2025)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

Compiling the video with other protest footage did not make it fair use.

The City of Chicago did not engage in fair use when it pulled down a video down from Twitter and released it to the media as part of a compilation of footage about a 2020 clash between police and protestors, the federal court for Chicago has held. The court, in granting summary judgment for the videographer in his copyright infringement lawsuit against the city, also found that the social media handle and other identifying information that accompanied the posting on the social media entity now known as X qualified as a form of copyright management information protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Gwinn v. City Of Chicago, No. 1:23-cv-01823 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 31, 2025)).

The lawsuit arises out of a clash between protestors and the Chicago police in June 2020 near the statue of Christopher Columbus statue in Grant Park. Dominic Gwinn, a freelance journalist, shot a 102-second video of the incident and posted it to his Twitter page. Several days after the incident, Chicago police superintendent David Brown played at a press conference an approximately eight-minute-long compilation video comprised of several different recordings of the protest march and following altercation. The compilation video included ninety-seven seconds of Gwinn’s work in a single cut.

The videographer sued the City of Chicago, as well as the police commissioner, for copyright infringement and for removal of copyright management information in violation of the DMCA. Both parties moved for summary judgment after discovery, leading to this opinion.

Fair use. The court first granted the videographer’s motion for summary judgment on the city’s fair use defense. The central question was whether the city had made a transformational use of the videographer’s work. The city argued that the commissioner was creating a new “aesthetic, message, and meaning” by juxtaposing the video with other footage from the same event, adding graphics, and providing commentary as the video was played. But “[s]imilar arguments have been rejected by courts across the nation when considering transformative use in news reporting,” the court noted. It might have been one thing, the court noted, if the city had used the video due to the “inherent newsworthy quality” of Gwinn’s presence or his video. But that was not the case here, the court reasoned. “Rather, the defendants used his video because of what it depicted—the events in Grant Park on June 17,” the court noted. “As such, their use was not transformative and shared the character and purpose of the Work.”

The other fair use factors did not tilt the calculus, the court found. The court found that the second factor, the nature of the work, tilted slightly in favor of the city because it was news coverage. The court found that the third factor, the amount of the work used, tilted strongly against the city because the police commissioner’s compilation used “all but six seconds” of the original. As to the fourth factor, the court noted, the evidence did not cut strongly one way or another—the photographer claimed that he had received offers to license the work before the city’s press conference, but neither side came up with evidence as to why those licenses did not come to fruition. On balance, the court noted, “the first factor is the determinative factor.” Because the city copied the work “for the exact purpose it was created to serve,” the court noted, “[t]his dominates the fair use analysis and compels the Court to conclude that the defendants’ actions do not constitute fair use.”

DMCA claim. The court also granted the videographer’s motion for summary judgment on the DMCA claim. The first question it had to address was whether the Twitter post counted as protected copyright management information. Whether a tweet containing a work is CMI, the court noted, “is a novel question which only one other court has had the opportunity to grapple with.” That court, a district court in Manhattan, had found that a tweet did count as CMI. The Chicago court agreed. Here, the videographer posted his video to Twitter using the account “@DominicGwinn,” which also displayed the username “Dominic Gwinn.” That constituted “information conveyed in connection with copies” of a work under the DMCA, the court found.

The court also found that the city had violated the DMCA when it distributed the video—without the videographer’s identifying information—as part of the compilation it played for the press. Although the Seventh Circuit had not yet ruled on the question, the court noted, it was widely accepted that the DMCA has what is known as a “double scienter” requirement. That is, the court noted, a plaintiff claiming a violation of the DMCA based on the removal of copyright management information must show both that the defendant removed the information intentionally and that the defendant did so with the intent to induce or facilitate further infringement of the work. The videographer had proved his case against the city—albeit not against the police commissioner individually—on both counts, the court found.

The city’s own admissions, the court noted, made this clear. As to the intentional removal of CMI, the court noted, the city admitted that it added the work to the compilation video without attribution to Gwinn. Moreover, the court noted, there was no material dispute that the city emailed the compilation to members of the press, uploaded a recording of the press conference to YouTube, and posted the compilation to Twitter. “At least one of these actions led to local news affiliates hosting their own copies of the [c]ompilation as part of a longer video of the press conference,” the court noted. That was enough to find in favor of the videographer on summary judgment, the court concluded.

The Case is No. 1:23-cv-01823.

Judge: Daniel, J.

Attorneys: Evan A. Andersen (SRipLaw, P.A.) for Dominic Gwinn. Joseph F. Schmidt (Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP) for City of Chicago.

Cases: Copyright IllinoisNews