Here's my email to Robin Abcarian of the LA Times in response to her article that was published today:

Robin -

Regarding your article about X17 suing Perez, you asked me why I’m suing Perez and not another blogger and that’s when I gave the answer that it’s because he’s the most blatant infringer and the most arrogant (I never said pigheaded, by the way). That was not my answer as to why I’m suing him. To give that quotation to Perez as the reason for our lawsuit against him is bad journalism in my opinion. And pitching the story in the second paragraph, as somehow less serious or valid because we take paparazzi images and not ‘news’ images, is confusing the issue. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement no matter what you, personally, see as the value of the material.

You also say we have “agreements” with many blogs, allowing them to post images with proper credit and a link back to our site. What we have in place is purely an agency-client relationship with PinkIsTheNewBog, PopSugar, and SocialiteLife to pay to license our images. It is no different than our agreement with UsMagazine.com or People.com other than that these blogs pay a reduced licensing fee in exchange for publishing our images with a link back to our site. There are no other sites currently participating in this deal other than the aforementioned three.

And why give the URL of Pere’z blog and not of ours and why link to Perez’s blog (in the online version of the article) and not to ours? Seems to be more proof of your one-sidedness in this story.

Why not also point out that the “fair use” defense would mean that anyone anywhere in any medium could publish our images without licensing them? That would mean that X17 would become a public service, and not-for-profit company? People, Us, In Touch, and ET, Access Hollywood and all our other clients wouldn’t need to pay for our images any more? Perez can’t claim newsworthiness when an image has never been published anywhere other than his own blog — when it hadn’t even made the news until he infringed it!

- Brandy Navarre

And this is just my personal note to all the Perez fans out there -- I'm not jealous of Perez. I wish he had been able to do what he does legally because I quite enjoy his site. The battle we're fighting is not a grade-school argument, it is a legal issue and our aim is to protect the images we work so hard at getting. Perez just had to pay for the images like everyone else and he chose not to do so, which has landed him where he is, squarely at the center of this lawsuit.