In German we call it schadenfreude to delight in other’s troubles, and I guess that’s what I would feel in this instance if the guy wasn’t grinning so maniacally. Getting sued is how his blog shot to popularity in the first place, and he’ll deal with it and milk the publicity like he always does. He’s getting rich scrawling on images he finds on bulletin boards and jacking other’s ideas and will continue to do it for months if not years while this lawsuit drags on. He works hard, I can give him that.

According to sources, Perez made $800k last year off his blog and from paid appearances. He’s been sued for copyright infringement to the tune of $7 million by INF, Bauer-Griffin, Flynet, London Entertainment and Splash.

There was a video of Perez getting served a cease and desist last November, and this news that he’s getting sued by a conglomerate of the photo agencies came out a few weeks ago. They must have been getting their ducks in a row before giving him the paperwork.

I’m starting to buy images for the blog and it’s not cheap or easy to work out the details, but it’s necessary once your site is popular and is only fair. Still, I have mixed feelings about it as it’s expensive to license images and is nearly impossible until you reach a certain point, which involves months if not years of work. Maybe the right solution is a compromise with agencies giving blogs permission to use a certain number of low-res watermarked images per month.

These pictures, unlike celebrity candids, were free as the agencies want us to distribute them.

Credit: Splash/INF/Bauer-Griffin/London Entertainment/Flynet