Axl Rose is taking legal action over an internet meme which depicts him in a less than flattering light. Rose is attempting to remove the picture of him from the internet entirely.
The image was taken in 2010 by photographer Boris Minkevich at a Guns N’ Roses show at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg, Canada. It has been widely used as an internet meme making fun of Rose’s appearance at the time as he was overweight.
It was recently reported that Axl Rose has filed a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notice, asking Google and other web firms to remove the photo from the web entirely.
The DMCA complaint that was sent to Google reads “Copyright image of Axl Rose. Please be advised that no permission has been granted to publish the copyright image so we cannot direct you to an authorised example of it.”
Rose claims that he owns the copyright to the original image because he gets photographers to sign over copyright control of all images at all of his shows.
Speaking in an interview with TorrentFreak, the photographer Boris Minkevich said he doesn’t remember signing any such agreement and he said he was unaware that Axl Rose is “trying to cleanse the web” of the image.
Photo Credit: Laura Cox
