The Streisand effect
You might remember it as Barbra Streisand Malibu photograph
“Let’s call it the Streisand Effect.”
2003·Early web, before YouTube
The law the internet discovered about trying to take something off the internet.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- Barbra Streisand Malibu photograph
- Spread in
- 2003
- Began as
- Something that happened offline
- Format
- Phrase
- Taken from
- Image 3850 of the California Coastal Records Project, an aerial photograph of the coastline at Malibu
- Made by
- Named by Mike Masnick of Techdirt
- What it said
- “Let’s call it the Streisand Effect.”
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
In 2003 Barbra Streisand sued a photographer for fifty million dollars over an aerial shot of her Malibu house, one of twelve thousand images in a coastal erosion survey. The photograph had been downloaded six times, twice by her own lawyers. In the month after the suit, 420,000 people went and looked. The case was dismissed and she paid $177,000 in costs. Mike Masnick of Techdirt named the pattern on 5 January 2005.
Why it matteredWhat changed
It names the rule that trying to remove something from the internet is the surest way to spread it. The photograph it is named for had been downloaded six times before the lawsuit, two of them by the lawyers bringing it.
TimelineIn order
- Made
Barbra Streisand sues the photographer Kenneth Adelman for fifty million US dollars over an aerial photograph that shows her house, one of twelve thousand in a survey of the California coast.1
- Later
The suit is dismissed. In the month after it was filed the site had more than 420,000 visits.1
- Later
Streisand is reported to have been ordered to pay Adelman’s legal fees of 177,000 US dollars.1
- Found
Mike Masnick, writing about a different takedown demand, proposes the name.1
- Corrected
In her memoir Streisand writes that her objection was to her name being attached to the picture, and that in retrospect the suit was a mistake.1
What people misrememberSet straight
Commonly remembered asThe term dates from the 2003 lawsuit.
ActuallyIt was coined in January 2005, in a post about somebody else’s takedown notice.1
Commonly remembered asThe photograph was already widely seen.
ActuallyIt had been downloaded six times.1
What it createdWhat came out of it
- In 2013 a French intelligence agency’s attempt to have a Wikipedia article deleted made it, for a time, the most-read page on French Wikipedia.1
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · copied, redrawn and reused until the original stopped mattering · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This happened away from the internet before anybody put it online.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This happened away from the internet before anybody put it online.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things