Adios, Amigo! Popular Gossip Blogger Gets the Boot From his Web Host

June 22, 2007 — -- Perez Hilton, the popular blogger who puts celebrities in the limelight, is getting a taste of his own medicine.

Hilton, less commonly known by his given name, Mario Lavandeira, is the target of several lawsuits alleging that his Web site, Perezhilton.com, routinely posts photos he does not have legal permission to use.

According to Variety, the site was taken offline two days ago by its host, Crucial Paradigm, after the host reportedly received warnings from angry photo agencies irked by the unapproved use of their images.

"He has been fully aware that he has been infringing on our photos," said Brandy Navarre, co-owner of X17, one of the celebrity photo agencies suing Lavandeira, or Hilton, as he's known by his many followers in the blogosphere. "This is just how he decides to do his work."

In addition to X17, five other photo agencies have come together to file a lawsuit against Hilton for illegally using their images.

The Perez Hilton blog, self-proclaimed as "Hollywood's most hated Web site," combines photographs, videos and articles about celebrities ranging from Nicole Richie to Christina Aguilera. Hilton regularly marks the images digitally, writing phrases such as "I'm still mad" on a photo of Isaiah Washington, who was recently fired from the hit show "Grey's Anatomy," and "on the mend" on a photo of under-the-weather late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

The four lawsuits, which include at least six photo agencies, allege that many times these images are used on sites without consent and posted illegally without compensating the companies who own the rights to the photos.

Perez Hilton was unavailable for personal comment but sent the following statement to ABC News through Matt Lum, the director of technology for Perezhilton.com.

"Perezhilton.com stands by its commitment to protect the freedom of people to transform content on the Internet for the purpose of commentary and satire and unquestionably believes that it comports with the fair use exception," Lum said. "Threats, intimidation and lawsuits to try to restrict First Amendment rights should not be tolerated as a substitute for judicial determination of fair use."

Sara Edelman, a partner at the New York-based law firm of David & Gilbert, which specializes in copyright law, said the fair use doctrine that Lum referred to allows people to take other people's work only to expand on it, to use it as a springboard for commentary or to make a statement about the underlying work.

She said that just marking a photograph digitally, as Hilton did on his site, did not come under fair use.

"Even if you just change the photograph a bit it wouldn't immunize you from copyright infringement," Edelman said.