Harry Styles Violates Copyright Law With Uncredited Use Photographer's Image On Instagram

A professional photographer has been subjected to social media abuse from One Direction fans after calling out singer Harry Styles for posting one of his images on Instagram without crediting him.

Ezequiel Scagnetti, a Brussells-based photographer, was called a "prick" and a "jerk" by fans who, without basis, assumed that he was just blowing the incident out of proportion to draw attention to his work.

Scagnetti posted a screenshot of "Drag Me Down" singer's Instagram post. 

"750,000 likes - but I don't like it," he captioned. "I'm interested to see who is this guy that published my picture and got 750,000 likes, without even mentioning my name."

Shortly after, the photographer's post was flooded by abusive messages from One Directioners.

"I wouldn't even know about the photo if he didn't post it," a fan of Harry Styles said. "He helped you, jerk."

Other fans were a bit more furious toward the photographer.

"That guy is Harry Styles and even his bum is more famous and smarter than you," a fan exclaimed.

He deemed that the abusive fans were worthy of a response despite their "extremely aggressive, xenophobic, homophobic and racist insults."

"I'm not talking about the lack of knowledge or simple ignorance in subjects as photography, arts, copyright, etc. you are completely lost on those subjects and that's fine for me, you are kids," he explained about the controversial Instagram post of Harry Styles. "I'm talking about your petty and narrow mind."

Scagnetti then explained why he's defending his decision to copyright his photographs, also mentioning that the 22-year-old singer also earns through copyrighted works.

"Do you know that #harrystyles and myself, we live of copyright? an excerpt of Scagnetti's lengthy response published by Peta Pixel read. "Every streamed song, every CD you buy, every concert ticket you pay, you are paying artist's copyrights. If you are not paying for it, some sponsor or company is doing it for you. Nothing is free. Neither Harry Styles work's, neither my work.

Neither Harry Styles nor his reps have commented on the subject. The unauthorized Instagram post has since been deleted.