Brian May was left fuming after a woman had him temporarily banned from Instagram on Monday (13.11.17).
The Queen legend had his account disabled after the user, he has named as Barbara Kremer, reported him for copyright violation for sharing a professional photo of himself performing on his profile, which she claims she took, because he did not credit her.
Within 45 minutes the ‘We Will Rock You’ guitarist was able to reactive his account, but was still annoyed and accused Kremer of "exploiting" and profiting from his image.
Brian, 70, insists he would have understood if she had got in contact with him and asked him to add her name to the photo.
However, he says he’s been left feeling "pretty violated" by Barbara’s actions, and has warned her not to attend the rock band’s concerts in the future as he will have her "thrown out" should she turn up.
Alongside a screenshot of the warning message he got from the photo-sharing app, he wrote: "Well this is what I woke up to. How RUDE ! I’m usually very careful to credit anyone whose photos I post – but in this case, at the end of the day, I must have forgotten. So, rather than write to me and say "dear Brian- you seem to have forgotten to credit me on this picture", this person – Barbara Kremer is her name – reported me to Instagram and they not only took the picture down but disabled my whole account until I’d dealt with the issue – which took about 45 minutes of my time that I could not afford because the link refused to work on my phone. What an incredibly unfriendly act from you, Barbara ! You not only took my picture and are evidently exploiting my image, and making money off me without so much as a ‘by your leave’ – but you actually stop me using a picture of myself ! What a crazy world we live in these days. All I can say is that if you feel you were ‘violated’, I feel pretty violated myself. To the point where If I ever discover that you are at one of our concerts in future, look out, because, logically, I will be tempted to have you thrown out.
Well, Good Morning !!! Bri (sic)"
The notice read: "Instagram Copyright Violation
We’ve removed or disabled access to the following content you posted on Instagram because a third party reported that the content violates their copyright."
Brian May felt ‘violated’ after his Instagram was blocked
