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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
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
They can already do 1) and 2) is not going to happen, its just too loaded with pitfalls. Dave was going for his mother's funeral, whoops, lawsuit. I don't think people appreciate the demand for even low quality stock photos out there.
Instagram has apparently a billion odd photos uploaded. Lets say that optimistically 1% of those are saleable at all. That's 10 million photos, now lets say 10% of those earn a dollar a month in sales between them, that's a million bucks a month. Not too shabby, and quite possible, one photo in a thousand earning a dollar a month. That they'd have to do it for around a century just to break even is beside the point, I've no idea what the hell they were thinking spending that much money on a photo upload service in the first place.
Still, its an all round scummy move by facebook and probably illegal too. Maybe if they offered an opt-in profit sharing system instead, or something, that might be good.
Odd that everyone is complaining about their land-grab of photographs and very few are mentioning their permitted use of your username and likeness which seems a lot more objectionable to me. Facebook is full of invasive and misleading ads for dating sites that would just love a cache of readily available real names and profile photos to attach to their fake users. I'd much rather they nicked my spur-of-the-moment snaps than used me to defraud lonely and desperate people.
And behold, a command prompt and he who sat upon it, his name was shutdown and -h 3:11 followed with him
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.
You just lost points for admitting you watch Judge Judy...
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
"I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further!" -- Darth Zuckerberg