In Australia, Even Private Facebook Photos Are Public

littlekorea writes "Australia's telecommunications regulator has ruled that one of the country's largest broadcasters, Channel 7, did not breach the industry code of conduct by lifting photos of deceased persons and minors from social networking site Facebook. Significantly, the regulator noted that it doesn't have the legal authority to crack down on broadcasters that lift material tagged as 'private,' looking to the Attorney General to provide some legal clarity."

Comments

Nothing to hide – nothing to see here

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it that in Australia we just seem to be 18 months behind the rest of the world?
The UK has had the News of the World scandal; however, we are still in the "Nothing to hide" movement of several years back:

A recent article on this topic is at http://www.1place.com.au/1P/blog1p/?p=2269

The problem with “nothing to hide” surveillance or intrusions into privacy is, that if such an approach is left to dominate without regulation, then our secrets will diminish. Secrets give rise to disruptive thought in areas such as in technology contributes to help society evolve. Privacy and confidentiality are areas of law that help ideas develop into disruptive technology.

Makes sense.

[CarboRobo]

A "private" tag doesn't magically make a public item private.

Re:Makes sense.

[Gaygirlie]

It depends on the implementation. If once you have tagged something private only a select group of people have access to it then it is private, if it however is just a text tag and everyone still has access to it then it is public. Tagging something as private shows very clear intent from the poster and especially if access to it is also restricted then the intent is more than clear enough, atleast here in Finland. I suppose in the rest of the world common sense is extinct or outlawed.

Re:Makes sense.

[one cup of coffee]

A "private" tag doesn't magically make a public item private.

Then what's the point of calling it private? It's misleading to do so isn't it? Also, the very nature of social networks operate on the basis of filtering, without which there's no point in having "friends" or groups etc, it would just be a giant cluster-fuck like the wild west days of the early internet which to some degree is why people flocked to social networks in the first place. I'm not saying it isn't a giant cluster-fuck on FB either btw, but just because a lot of people are ignorant about how the internet works, doesn't mean that they deserve to have their children or deceased family members images trawled and publicly monetized by multi-billion dollar corporations. Yes, I realize that's exactly what FB, Google, et. all are doing, but at least they do it privately, and supposedly anonymously, that's what makes them tolerable. After all, you can't escape unless you basically shun society as a whole, because even if you don't have a FB account, someone at sometime will take your photo and tag you online without your permission. Please tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm arguing that there has to be protections. That is the purpose of governments anyways, to provide protections for its members the citizens. I think the Australian government failed on this one.

Re:Makes sense.

[CarboRobo]

If I label an ice cube "hot", it doesn't make it so. If I label an elephant "small", it doesn't make it so. Likewise with images I've posted on Facebook: they're quite obviously public, regardless of whether I'd like them to be, or how I've tagged them

How ingenuous!

[aglider]

Do you really think that once you put something private online it will be private forever?
Privacy is a process, not a product or, worse, a tag on a file.
Do you want to keep your "digital life" private?
Forget about putting it online.

Good Grief... Not again...

[Frosty Piss]

Again, folks, nothing you post on Facebook is private. Nothing. Seriously, there are simply ***NO*** privacy issues with Facebook, because nothing on Facebook is private.

The rule is simple: If you want to maintain privacy, don't post your "private" material on Facebook or any other "social networking" web site.

 

Re:Good Grief... Not again...

[Kjella]

That's not nearly enough, unfortunately. My Facebook profile is next to nothing, it exists only so I can respond to event invites because it's become the de facto way of doing it and in some way I can understand that people go "Why can't you stop being such a special snowflake so I can have my guest list in one place?" and isolated speaking, no I don't really care that anyone knows I was there. But as a free bonus I also got tagged in pictures from the party by some less than privacy sensitive people, which I don't need. I didn't upload those pictures, I didn't tag them and honestly I wish there was a "do not tag" flag I could set where nobody could tag me in any way without approval. Then again I turned my sharing settings down to the minimum, though I'm not sure it actually helps when I'm not the one doing the sharing. Sigh.....

Re:Good Grief... Not again...

[Pharmboy]

Stop getting drunk. Your brain cells will thank you.

Stop telling others how to live. It isn't your concern.

What about copyright ?

[Alain Williams]

There are 2 aspects to copyright:

1) Since they were marked private it is evident that they were released (to the social network) under a license that did not include reproduction on television.

2) Were the photographers of the pictures paid by the TV network a fee so that they could be broadcast ?

I suspect that the TV network did not even think of these points and would have ignored the issues anyway.

Re:What about copyright ?

[Archon-X]

Your hunch is correct, and it's not the first time that Channel 7 have done this sort of this.
4-5 years ago for the launch of one of their shows, they had stills of cityscapes. Curiously, it was a familiar set of stills - they'd gone to google images, and pulled down the top 10 photos.

Noone had been contacted to ask for permission. There was a complaint procedure that went like this:

Ch7: The images appearing in the transmission come from our media library.
Right Holder: No, they're mine.
Ch7: No, they really came from our media library. Do not make allegations that you're not prepared to defend in court.
Right Holder: Here's 'your' image, with mine overlayed. Here's the other 10, and here's the matching google search.
Ch7: We have been told by our lawyers not to respond to your communications. Any pursuit of this matter will see it terminate in court.

Essentially, it's a media corp. They don't care, and they'll do whatever they can for stories.

Re:What about copyright ?

[QuasiSteve]

Actually, they'll take it one step further if you do indicate that you're willing to take it to court; they'll offer you a small amount of money (nothing remotely what the image was worth to them*), point out the court proceedings costs for you even if you should win the case, tell you that you really should be honored that your picture was used because it means exposure for you that you can capitalize on**, and have a good day.

Of course...
* It's worth shit to them, because if they couldn't have gotten your image, they would have picked the next one in the Google Images result.
** You can't really capitalize on it because of the above and the story in itself.

The only way you could capitalize on it is if somebody said "We saw your picture on so-and-so network and we'd like to commission you for a shoot of this-and-that" - but unless you're a professional photographer instead of the amateur that got a lucky shot off that was used in the broadcast, you probably can't even answer that with a letter of acceptance.

On the up side, corporations are becoming more aware of the 'rights' side of things and will often look for CC material that doesn't have the NC clause after exhausting their true royalty-free stock libraries.

Does not compute...

[msobkow]

IN THIS CORNER: Facebook. Google. Slashdot. Forums. Blogs. MSN. Yahoo. Groups. Lists. Sharing. Publishing. Broadcasting.

And in this corner: privacy.

Seriously, if it's private, WTF are you posting it to a web service for?

Re:Does not compute...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I'm lonely god damnit! Likes, upvotes. +'s, insightful mods and linkbacks are the only thing keeping me from falling into the abyss! Is that what you wanted to hear?

*sobs* You can stick cameras in my toilet if it just means you care about me. I'd trade my privacy for a little bit of interest....

Not an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha suckers, I don't even have facebook.

Or friends.

Bad description = non-story

[Mr_Silver]

So I read the description of the story and thought to myself "this makes no sense, if you posted photos as private or friends only, how on earth did Channel Seven get hold of them?"

So, shockingly, I read the story and it turns out the description is completely wrong. Here are the key parts (bold mine for emphasis):

Australia's communications regulator has ruled that television networks are not breaking the industry's code of practice when publishing photos lifted from a public Facebook profile.

[...]

"The ACMA found that due to the open nature of the tribute page, the absence of privacy settings and the non-sensitive nature of the photographs, Seven did not breach the privacy provisions of the code," the ACMA noted in a press statement.

In short, they lifted photos tagged as public on a public tribute page, littlekorea completely twisted the truth (by mixing up "public" and "private") when submitting the story and timothy didn't do any basic editing.

It'll be interesting to sit back with the popcorn and watch the comments from outraged slashdotters who didn't bother to read the story and the upvotes from those with moderator points who equally didn't bother to read the story ...

There is a section on private sections

[robbak]

The ACMA was begrudgingly unable to guarantee that users marking content as “private” on a social network could be safe guarded from broadcasters and publishers making it public, at least under the industry code of practice.

“The ACMA made it clear that while it considers the use of privacy settings an important consideration when assessing material obtained from social networking sites, the actual settings are not determinative,” the regulator noted.

Instead, the regulator will determine matters taken before it on a case-by-case basis.

“In each case, the ACMA will assess a licensee’s compliance with its privacy code obligations having regard to the specific circumstances of the broadcast.”

And that is interesting. They are stating that a private tag is not absolute. Things such as 'in the public interest' would come into play. The 'FoaF posted it public' issue would also come into play, where a journalist may not know that the original source of the image wanted it to be kept private.

Copyright violation?

[mshenrick]

Isn't any digital creation automatically copyrighted by the owner, unless they waiver it, so the photos were copyrighted by the user

Re:Copyright violation?

[robbak]

If you place it on a site, marked as "public", you may be seen to have authorized its reproduction. This is the case here.

And, of course, a journalist has a range of 'fair use' rights that may allow them to use a copyrighted picture. This may be the case in a future case where a picture posted to a private page may be used. ACMA will deal with such a case if an when it comes up.

RTFA

[msobkow]

Read the article. The photos were not published to a "select group", they were PUBLIC in Facebook terms.

This case involved someone complaining that their publicly published photos were publicly redistributed by the media, and the judge rightly said that if it's on Facebook and tagged as public, it is fair game for anyone.

I say again: if you don't want it being publicly accessed, why would you post it to a public web service? Send it as an email, host it on your own secure server requiring logins to view the images, etc. You wouldn't post it as a Slashdot journal entry/attachment and then claim "but I said the links were to my private photos -- you shouldn't have been clicking on my links!"

The judge's argument is very rational: if no attempt is made to protect the media from access, it cannot be considered "private" under the law.