Brandon Stanton, the founder of Humans of New York (HoNY), has taken a veiled jibe at Mumbai-based digital storytelling platform Humans of Bombay (HoB). Taking to social media, the New York-based artist has said that he has not received money for a single story told on his platform for the last 13 years despite many offers. The HoNY founder added that all his income has come from his books, speeches and via Patreon.
The controversy started when Stanton had flagged the copyright lawsuit of Humans of Bombay against a rival website named People of India (PoI). In its lawsuit against People of India, Humans of Bombay (HoB) accused the rival website of copyright infringement. The Karishma Mehta-founded digital storytelling platform claimed that PoI copied its content including its logo, tagline and the format of stories.
Going ahead, Stanton said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, “Beautiful art can make money, there is nothing wrong with that. But when art begins with a profit motive, it ceases to become art. And it becomes a product.”
He added that he does not have a problem with anyone who is using the ‘Humans of’ concept to tell beautiful stories about their community. “I do not identify with anyone who is using it for the sake of creating a certain lifestyle for themselves,” the HoNY founder said.
HoB also alleged that People of India used images and videos from its platform without permission, essentially replicating its business model including stories themselves. The Delhi High Court took cognisance of the lawsuit and issued a notice to PoI on September 18. While flagging the copyright lawsuit against People of India, Stanton earlier had said in a now-viral post that Humans of Bombay “can’t be suing people for what I’ve forgiven you for.”
But why did the HonY founder become so agitated upon seeing Humans of Bombay’s lawsuit against People of India? Stanton founded Humans of New York in 2010, four years before Humans of Bombay. HoNY began as a photography project in 2010 with the initial aim to photograph 10,000 New York residents on street and create a catalogue out of those pictures, according to the Humans of New York website.
This digital platform founded by Stanton originally presented human-centric stories of New York residents using a unique storytelling format. This formula of storytelling went viral within no time.
Four years later in 2014, Karishma Mehta founded Humans of Bombay as a Facebook page aimed at telling stories of Mumbai residents or Mumbaikars using the exact same format that Stanton’s HoNY did.
In another development, Humans of Bombay said in a post saying it was “grateful to HoNY and Brandon for starting this storytelling movement.” It added that this lawsuit is related to intellectual property in posts and not about storytelling at all. “We tried to address the issue amicably before approaching the Court, as we believe in protecting our team’s work,” HoB noted.
But, soon after this, the digital storytelling platform accused the HoNY founder of “a cryptic assault on our efforts to protect our intellectual property” without understanding the background of the case. The digital storytelling platform’s response to Brandon Stanton triggered a social media storm as users lambasted HoB for choosing the legal route over compassion. The response by Humans of Bombay also triggered a memefest on social media.
HoB has 2.7 million followers on Instagram, more than 15,000 followers on X, and around 1.4 million followers on Facebook. HoNY, on the other hand, has 12.8 million followers on Instagram, 2,441 followers on X, and around 17 million followers on Facebook.
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