Humans Of Bombay gets trolled for filing copyright infringement suit against People Of India

On Saturday, Stanton responded to a media report about the Delhi High Court summoning POI in the lawsuit filed by HOB and wrote, ‘I’ve stayed quiet on the appropriation of my work because I think @HumansOfBombay shares important stories, even if they’ve monetized far past anything I’d feel comfortable doing on HONY. But you can’t be suing people for what I’ve forgiven you for.”

In a follow-up tweet, he wrote that he has “always loved” Humans of Amsterdam run by Debra Barraud because it “has stayed so true to the art, and has never viewed the stories that she shares as the “front end” of a business”.

I’ve always loved @HumansofAdam because Debra has stayed so true to the art, and has never viewed the stories that she shares as the “front end” of a business

— Brandon Stanton (@humansofny) September 23, 2023

The tweets quickly gathered thousands of likes, with people labelling HOB’s lawsuit as hypocritical. People also trolled HOB for covert marketing and staging stories. Additionally, former videos of HOB founder Karishma Mehta also surfaced in which she claims that she got the idea of starting HOB “completely randomly and out of the blue”.

Humans of Bombay founder Karishma Mehta said that she got the idea of HOB "Completely randomly and out of the blue".

It's like Abibas/Poma saying that they got the idea completely random and then sued Adidas/Puma. 😂#HumansofBombay pic.twitter.com/sLouYliBVn

— Rahul Bhardwaj (@_rahulism_) September 24, 2023

#HumansofBombay pic.twitter.com/HMWYDE6Sze

— Salad🥗 (@audioslave_2k22) September 24, 2023

Ok this is getting a lot of attention, just clarifying before I get sent to court. Aisa directly kuch nahi bola tha it was implied. Like when you look for houses the broker asks you your name and then shows you houses accordingly waisa…

— Hussain (@officiallysane) September 24, 2023

#KarishmaMehta after going to study abroad and getting funded by her father for #HumansOfBombay pic.twitter.com/bvfTUWPMkQ

— wall art 🍉 (@ranjisheesahi) September 24, 2023

The actual humans of bombay to the #HumansOfBombay pic.twitter.com/Hkzhv9RVfw

— Lord Toranaga (@BlackMirrorMonk) September 24, 2023

#HumansOfBombay pic.twitter.com/DARFfEUp5P

— Sanitary Panels (@sanitarypanels) September 24, 2023

Same energy #HumansOfBombay pic.twitter.com/YzUcmW3KXW

— SwatKat💃 (@swatic12) September 24, 2023

Every #HumansOfBombay Post ever: When I was 11, papa would sit us down by the balcony and point out cars on Marine Drive. “Woh dekh Maruti Esteem, woh waali gaadi chhapraasi chalatey hai”, he would say with a chuckle. (1/n) pic.twitter.com/EBOI6G5shn

— Jackie J. Thakkar (@Juvenile_Jack) September 23, 2023

Tried putting some context to the #HumansofBombay "clarification" tweet on #HumansofNewYork founder @humansofny. pic.twitter.com/NvyXbHe6c0

— Kumar Manish (@kumarmanish9) September 24, 2023

In its defence, HOB claimed that the lawsuit is against the replication of images/videos from its platform by POI, and not about storytelling. In a series of tweets, it shared screenshots that showed POI posting almost identical posts based on HOB’s posts.

We are grateful to HONY & Brandon for starting this storytelling movement.

The suit is related to the IP in our posts & not about storytelling at all.

We tried to address the issue amicably before approaching the Court, as we believe in protecting our team’s hard work.

PFA

— Humans Of Bombay (@HumansOfBombay) September 24, 2023

Amongst all this, some netizens noted that the controversy has resulted in much publicity for POI. Echoing this view, an X user wrote, “It seems that ‘People of India’ benefited the most from all this e-lafda with official humans of Bombay. They saved a lot of money on marketing, and now more people are aware of ‘People of India’.”