Slashdot Mirror
Instagram Wants To Sell Users' Photos Without Notice
DavidGilbert99 writes "Many Instagram users have reacted angrily to a proposed change to the apps terms of service by owner Facebook, which would give the social network 'perpetual' rights to all photos on Instagram, allowing it to sell the photos to advertisers without notice — or payment to the user. The new policy will come into effect on 16 January, just four months after Facebook completed its $1bn acquisition of Instagram. It states that Facebook has a right to distribute any content posted on Instagram without paying the user royalties:"
Also worth reading Declan McCullagh's take on it.
Instagram bubble
Like your photos are stubble
That they'll just whisk away
And save you the trouble.
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Never had instagram. Now I never will get one.
There is going to a lot of food images up for grabs...
It's not like there's any real competitors to Instagram. I mean, we never uploaded pictures to the internet before them, right?
Just when I thought I could never want to use Instagram less, this happens.
They want to sell shitty pictures, taken by shitty camera phones, that have shitty filters applied to them? Great business model there.
I played around with instagram for a few days, but I never really saw the point of it. I can take and post pictures with the camera that came with my phone. If I want to play around with the picture I have other apps for that, and they do not send the picture back to a mother ship.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
at what point is enough, enough. When are people going to quit Facebook/Instagram/whatever en masse as these deliberate and calculated abuses continue?
These are your pictures. You own them. No corporation has the right to use them without your permission just because they are holding them.
Sure, one can always not put up pictures, but that defeats the whole point of Instagram, doesn't it?
There are options. One could always upload the picture with a big watermark on it or plaster a copyright symbol and your name on it, but knowing these shysters, they would just remove those things and still claim it's theirs.
Just another reason why I don't use any of these "services".
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Yes, this is a shitty thing to do. So don't use Instagram or Facebook or any of the other "services" that are constantly trying to screw you for their profit. We got along just fine for a very long time without Facebook or Instagram. Time to grow up and move on.
....aaaaaaaaaaaaand switch.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I saw this yesterday, and was shocked. This is effectively stealing all users' photos that have been uploaded thus far, and a pretty sleazy thing to do even for new users. If I was an instagram user, my first action after seeing this would be to delete my account. There is almost nothing instagram could offer me that would be worth giving them this kind of free control over all of my photos.
The privacy implications for photos containing people is even more staggering. I doubt most people on instagram have current model releases for their photographs, so using these commercially could get any number of people sued, but based on the instagram policy, it very well could be the user who took them initially, then "gave instagram permission to use them commercially."
I would expect this policy to change, but if it doesn't by January 5 or so, I would suggest all instagram users delete their accounts. Also, if it doesn't change by then, watch out for Facebook's terms to change to something similar.
Except loss making Internet scam Facebook, has the details of who your close friends, not so close friends, relatives and enemies are. Of those, you may only have Instagram'd your photo to your close friends, but the rest would pay to see it, particularly your unfrienermies.
Facebook recently stopped letting Instagram photos be posted around freely, starting with Twitter. So it's only a matter of time before they sell access to your photos. The only people interested are friends, former friends and stalkers who didn't receive it. Since most people have their privacy rights changed by Facebook without them knowing it, they don't know Facebook has probably already given themselves the rights to show those photos outside your account, unless you press button Z twice on page broken link.
Facebook recently started selling 'adverts', so if you have money and want to send information to your following friends, you need to pay or they won't see it. In effect it is selling you the relationship you made and it broke. This is the flip side of that.
You see that it's not about selling photos to random people, because random people aren't interested in how drunk you were at a bar last night. Your boss on the other hand.. Your wife... Your angry ex-unfriended girlfriend. Or even for that matter your mum, who you decided didn't really need to see that, but FB knows she wants to look anyway.
This is despicable of course. And Instagram/Facebook needs to clearly and loudly (e.g. a click through notice when you login, and every day later until the 16th) explains this change in the ToS, and explains what it means (in plain English, not lawyer speak). But I bet they don't.
Anyway, any pictures with identifiable images of people in them could be a problem for whichever company purchases the image. Because of model rights you know? If an ad is run which has a person who is clearly identifiable, then in most places a model release is required. And I bet you that Instragram doesn't require that photographers have people sign model releases...
Oh, and the blog post:
A bit of a lie really. The key point from the various articles is:
http://instagram.com/about/legal/terms/updated/
You can express your disapproval of these changes by emailing support@instagram.com.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
But I posted that disclaimer on Facebook expressly forbidding them to do that
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
How can Instagram casually assume that the uploader even HAS the right to assign republishing rights to them? OK, fine... the TOS requires that uploaders have the rights. We all know that a certain percentage won't comply. How many times does Instagram really want to spin the roulette wheel and risk getting nailed by a lawsuit from someone who owns the copyright on a wrongly-uploaded photo... in a strict-liability jurisdiction with joint and several liability? In English, that means Jim might, under Instagram TOS, be 100% liable for infringement if he uploads a photo and gets Instagram sued when they republish it, but at the end of the day, Jim isn't going to pay that million-dollar lawsuit... Instagram will, because Jim is likely to be judgment-proof, and any halfway-competent attorney could get the judgment to adhere to Instagram regardless of what they might claim.
Not to mention, model releases. If Jim posts pictures taken at a birthday party his child attends, Instagram would legally need releases from every person (or their legal guardian) recognizable in the picture (with a few exceptions, but it's still a minefield).
Did I mention the legal suicide mission of using pics that have anything to DO with kids from Europe? I think in Germany, it's not even legal to use kids in an advertisement for anything, period... consent from fame-whoring parents or not. Or for that matter, the fact that fucked up French copyright law allows you to copyright the image of buildings and structures, even structures that dominate the horizon and are visible from literally miles away (like the Eiffel Tower and the Millau Viaduct), and (in legal theory, at least) make it almost impossible to publish photos taken almost anywhere in Paris (due to the large number of "historically and/or architecturally-significant structures") if they show a complete building facade of one or more buildings in the background? Granted, the French situation is slightly unique, and is used mainly by the French government as a tool for censorship of unflattering and politically-sensitive images, but that's just one country out of hundreds.
There's a reason why big corporations get all of their public photos from companies like Getty Images -- it lets their management and lawyers sleep at night knowing that the copyright clearances and model releases have all been taken care of, and the image vendor itself is big enough to pay any lawsuit that might arise from the photo's licensed use. It's also why some people have had so much fun showing the same clip-art models really getting around, and showing up in everything from ads to "happy employee" photos to patients at STD clinics.
He shouldn't be writing about this without disclosing his conflict of interest. Heck, she shouldn't be writing about this. Google does its own evil things with users' content.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/05/12/1935205/twitpic-will-sell-your-photos-but-no-cash-for-you
Contracts between online service vendors and consumers need to be regulated by law. There has to be some kind of way to define some bare minimums that these contracts adhere to. Such as, the terms of contract changes, ownership of data, etc.
Either that, or online contracts should simply be invalid. In this case I suppose that the owners of the data (pictures) would own them.
In the EU you cannot simply sign away most of your rights and futhermore, if the law is in contradiction with the EULA its a case of 'too bad for the EULA', as in: its uneforcable. (you cannot legally enforce contract terms that are in contradiction of the law) So it is already regulated by law, atleast around here and the people enforcing it usually have no qualms about going about punishing a company that cant cant keep its tendrils within boundries of the law.
Just because you've granted a license (through TOS, etc) to a third party, so they can use material for which you still retain the copyrights ... does NOT mean that the subjects in the photos have waived their privacy rights. Third parties looking to use the images commercially (NOT the photographer!) are the ones responsible for having that signed model release in hand, and are the targets for a suit in case of mis-using someone's likeness. Doesn't mean the pissed off subject won't also sue the photographer (because you can sue the proverbial ham sandwich, if you want), but the law is very clear in this area. The party that puts the image to commercial use is the one that needs the release in hand. It's not the photographer's responsibility to obtain it, keep it, or provide it to anyone (unless they've signed a contract with a third party that calls for them to do so ... but that's very specific, professional circumstances).
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If you read a little further down in the EULA, it also says they have the right to perform medical experiments on you, including making you part of a human centipede...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
They won't own them, as the Terms make explicitly clear. At the same time, you "grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service".
So, yes, you still own your photos, and yes, they can do anything they want with them.
The SHOCKING thing would be if FB did NOT do this.
"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further!" -- Darth Zuckerberg
How's that Facebook Cloud working for ya now??? I've never had one, never will. Because of shit like this. People always ask me "why aren't you on facebook?" Maybe this will convince them I was right.
"That seems narcissistic"
Folks can forget about deleting all their pictures from the site. I guarantee they were archived before the announcement was made. They probably have the ever-popular "Only individual binding arbitration" agreement as well.
The internet stopped being the "Wild West" and became feudal Europe a long time ago.