If your business republishes video clips, embeds social posts, or drops a screenshot into an article headline, a new ruling out of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (New York) is worth a close read. In Richardson v. Townsquare Media, Inc., decided April 23, 2026, the court significantly narrowed two defenses that online publishers have long leaned on to get copyright claims dismissed early: the “de minimis use” doctrine and fair use at the motion-to-dismiss stage. For any New York business that publishes content online, media outlets, marketing teams, e-commerce brands running blogs, or anyone whose social team likes to “borrow” a viral clip, this is a meaningful shift in litigation risk.
What happened?
Delray Richardson, a professional videographer, sued Townsquare Media, which operates the hip-hop news site XXL. The dispute centered on two pieces of Richardson’s content. First, a 2015 video Richardson recorded of Michael Jordan breaking up a fight went viral again in 2023 after a social media account (the DailyLoud) reposted it with a claim about who was involved. Townsquare wrote a news article about the ensuing controversy and embedded the DailyLoud’s post (full video included) and used a screenshot from the video as the article’s headline image. Second, Richardson had recorded a YouTube interview in which rapper Melle Mel criticized Eminem; Townsquare embedded that video, via YouTube’s own embed feature, in two separate articles, again using screenshots in each headline.
The district court (Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, S.D.N.Y.) dismissed the entire case on the pleadings. It held that republishing the Jordan video was fair use because the article added “new information and context,” that the headline screenshots were merely de minimis copying, and that the Melle Mel video was covered by the license baked into YouTube’s Terms of Service.
REJECTED! What the Second Circuit changed
The panel (Judges Lynch, Nardini, and Menashi) reversed course on two of the three rulings:
Fair use can’t be decided on the pleadings just because a story provides “context.” The court found it genuinely debatable whether Townsquare’s brief commentary, a few sentences of speculation lifted largely from the original social post, was transformative enough to justify republishing the entire video. More importantly, the court rejected the district court’s assumption that a news article “surrounding” a video with reporting couldn’t compete with the original: if viewers can watch the full video embedded in the article, they have little reason to seek it out from the creator. Because a defendant bears the burden of proving no market harm, and that showing is hard to make before discovery even happens, the fair-use defense failed at the pleading stage, even though it might still succeed later on a fuller record.
The de minimis defense doesn’t cover a copied image that’s still recognizable. The court held that de minimis use applies only where copying is not readily identifiable in the secondary work, not to a screenshot that’s a direct, recognizable lift from the original. A single frame from a video can be enough to establish infringement exposure if an average viewer would recognize it as coming from the original.
But embedding through a platform’s own licensed feature is a different story. The Melle Mel video claim was dismissed and stayed dismissed, because it had been posted to YouTube, and YouTube’s Terms of Service grant a license that unambiguously covers embedding by third parties like Townsquare. The court treated any violations of YouTube’s other content policies as issues between Townsquare and YouTube, not something Richardson could enforce.
Why this matters for New York businesses
The upshot is a real split in risk depending on how content gets onto your site. Embedding video through a platform’s native, licensed embed tool (YouTube’s embed code, for example) still carries meaningful protection, because the rightsholder’s license to the platform typically extends to that kind of reuse. But reposting a full clip pulled from a third party’s social post, or lifting a recognizable screenshot for a headline or thumbnail, is now considerably more exposed, both to a copyright claim surviving a motion to dismiss and to the cost of discovery that comes with it. “We only used one frame” and “our article gave it context” are no longer reliable shortcuts to an early win.
For clients with content, marketing, or social media operations, now is a good time to revisit internal practices: prefer official embed tools over screen-captured clips or reposted content, be deliberate about whether an image genuinely repackages a source with new meaning versus simply illustrating it, and assume that any recognizable frame or excerpt could be treated as the whole work for infringement purposes. A five-minute policy conversation with counsel now is considerably cheaper than defending a case into discovery later.
This post is for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. If your business has questions about content licensing, fair use, or copyright exposure, Burrell Law, P.C. is available to help.
Source: Richardson v. Townsquare Media, Inc., No. 25-291-cv (2d Cir. Apr. 23, 2026)
