Class-Action Lawsuit Goes After Instagram Terms of Service Changes

New submitter Alex Belits writes "Users of the Instagram image sharing service owned by Facebook filed a class action against Facebook for the recent change in Terms of Service." The changes that were supposed to take effect on January 16, 2013 declared for Facebook an unlimited right to use and license users' photos, added an arbitration requirement for legal disputes, and more. Guess the lawyers involved here weren't impressed enough by Facebook's hasty back-pedaling on this front; the company did explicitly disclaim ownership interest in the uploaded photos after a wave of complaints, but left in place certain other clauses in the new terms.

Comments

Pathetic back-pedaling...

[Mr. Tom Guycot]

It wasn't even back-pedaling, just word soup. They never claimed ownership, just a license to use them as they wished, and their later statement never went back on THAT.

Human hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

When Facebook uses the content we create for free it's bad, but when we use other people's content for free RIAA is bad!

Re:Human hypocrisy

[Gaygirlie]

When Facebook uses the content we create for free it's bad, but when we use other people's content for free RIAA is bad!

I know you're trying to make a point, but the situation isn't really comparable. For one, pirates do not claim ownership over the content, and secondly, pirates can't legally make money out of it whereas when a company imposes a ToS - change like this on its userbase they actually CAN then legally make money out of your content. That makes the whole premise of the situation quite different, with pirates mostly focusing on consuming the content themselves, and companies focusing on monetizing the content.

Re:Human hypocrisy

[ifiwereasculptor]

Not a bad comparison, though there is a difference between sharing and selling. Namely, the exchange of money. If Facebook/Instagram said your photos would be copylefted, I don't think people would object as much. But profiting from other people's work is a little shadier than just giving it away.

Re:Human hypocrisy

[PolygamousRanchKid]

When Facebook uses the content we create for free it's bad, but when we use other people's content for free RIAA is bad!

The folks with the most money: hire the best lawyers, buy the best Congressfolks and bribe the best judges.

They decide what is good and bad. Hell, they even direct the FBI to execute major dubious law enforcement activities in New Zeeland.

To Godwin this thread early: "the company did explicitly disclaim ownership interest in the uploaded photos after a wave of complaints"

"Hitler did explicitly disclaim ownership interest in starting WW2 after a wave of complaints"

On my cynical side, who really believed anyway, that Facebook and their retinue had no ownership interest in your data? They have been acting like they own it from day one.

Re:Human hypocrisy

[X.25]

When Facebook uses the content we create for free it's bad, but when we use other people's content for free RIAA is bad!

Facebook is (supposed to be) profiting from that 'usage'. People downloading movies off the Internet are not.

I understand the difference might be really hard to spot, but at least try.

They have no cause

[aepervius]

They can simply refuse the new term of service, and their photo will not be covered by the new TOS meaning instagram/FB won't be able to use them anyway. Naturally they lose usage of their photo but hey, so is life when you trust some random company with your stuff when you are obviously the "product" of that company. But i see no cause to sue the lawsuit will prolly be rejected at judge level.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/instagram.png

Re:They have no cause

[Khyber]

There's plenty of cause to the suit.

Look up "Contract of Adhesion" then re-read the old and revised TOS.

There is literally no 'meeting of the minds' here and the new/old EUA/TOS is quite overreaching with regards to personal copyright.

Umm... Don't use it?

[Holistic Missile]

If you don't agree with the terms, don't use it. No one's forcing you to.

I don't have, and never will have, a Facebook account due to privacy concerns (data mining, etc.), and concerns over use/abuse of users' writing/photos/whatever.

Anyone can use your photos/whatever for whatever they want - the general consensus seems to be that if it's on the internet, it's free to use. ZDNet got called out on a photo lifted from another website in a recent article/blog entry in the comments to that article. The author/blogger's response was 'Oh, is that where that came from?' I don't agree in any way with big media's take on copyright, but at least give credit, or better yet, ask permission, for something you're using.

If you don't want people using your photos, don't post them publicly on the internet. Try this: open a browser window to images.google.com, and drag a photo from another website onto the input field. Look at how many places it shows up! Try it with some of your Facebook photos - you may be surprised!

Re:Umm... Don't use it?

[sacrilicious]

If you don't agree with the terms, don't use it. No one's forcing you to.

Consider this similar logic: "If you don't like the Patriot act, don't live in the USA. No one's forcing you to."

This "free market" response to such issues is bullshit. The free market works when there is a lot of varied competition and when there is near-zero cost to transitioning from vendor to vendor. Neither is true in the case of picking a place to live, and neither is true in the case of Instagram. And when you try to pretend that free markets solve all and therefor nobody should give a damn, you make me want to blow your ass away with my 12-guage. Don't like it? Go live on a planet without guns.

Obligatory xkcd

[ericloewe]

http://xkcd.com/1150/

Anyone who expects stuff like this for free should think twice.
Then again, anyone who uses Instagram is an idiot, but that's a different story.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[sacrilicious]

I disagree with xkcd's take on this. Xkcd is proposing that the instagram situation is captured in this analogy:

* Paul puts lots of stuff in Iggy's garage
* Iggy gets sick of Paul freeloading, because Iggy has limited garage space and the agreement between Paul and Iggy was either unspecified or for limited-term, and Iggy feels that whatever length of time Paul's stuff has been there exceeds social etiquette / good taste.
* Iggy notifies Paul that he (Iggy) will get rid of Paul's stuff if he doesn't clear it out in a month.

I feel the analogy sucks because in reality, Instagram has tons of storage space, and the agreement between Instagram and its users was very well defined, even before these terms changed, and because Instagram made a massive pile of dough in no small part because of that original arrangement. A much better analogy is:

* Iggy solicits people to store personal writings into his boundless garage, because of benefits Iggy can derive from mass exposure.
* Iggy in fact benefits extremely handsomely when Fred comes along and purchases Iggy's garages. Iggy remains on in a capacity somewhere between consultant and semi-autonomous steersman.
* Fred-Iggy now tells all people who put stuff into the garages and contributed to the wealth that the terms are changing and their personal writings will be sold and used and appropriated in any way Fred-Iggy wants and profits from.
* And, xkcd comes along and uses an analogy that portrays people as freeloaders, and as selfish for wanting the agreement they signed up for to not be yanked away from them.

This isn't the first time I've found xkcd on the wrong side of an issue, and for me, this has rubbed me the wrong way to the point that I've actually decided to stop reading xkcd. Don't worry about telling me xkcd won't miss me, it's mutual.

Re:Obligatory xkcd

[ericloewe]

You're right. But you're missing one detail in your corrected analogy: There is no direct benefit for Fred-Iggy if they run a business for free. Something has to be sold to someone in some way.

My interpretation of the whole process goes like this, based on your two interpretations:

* Iggy asks Paul to use his garage to store stuff for free, which attracts Paul
* Paul puts lots of stuff in Iggy's garage
* Iggy hides his intention to sell the stuff off OR genuinely did not plan on selling the stuff and has no idea how to make money
* Behind the scenes, Fred buys Iggy's assets for an obscene amount of cash, again revealing evil plans OR no business sense
* At this point, Iggy has tons of stuff he can't use directly and is paying storage costs for
* Fred-Iggy decide to monetize (due to malice or shareholder pressure) their assets: the stuff they're keeping
* Paul gets upset because he believes he's the customer for Fred-Iggy's service, while Fred-Iggy see him as a source of material that can be sold to a third-party
* Fred-Iggy have a notorious policy of doing way more than just storing and displaying according to your rules what you gave them: they harvest everything they can about you to sell it to whoever wants the information

In conclusion, both parties are made up of morons. The difference between them being that Facebook-Instagram are just acting the way they're expected to in their role of an evil faceless (even though Facebook's not faceless, no pun intended) corporation, by stepping on the general public. Meanwhile the users expected all sorts of things for free, oppose to having their data sold off to the highest bidder (and rightly so) and are surprised by that move (nobody with half a brain should be surprised by now). And that's ignoring the fact that instagram has alternatives (dropbox, google drive, skydrive, iCloud) which are far more reputable and are only not chosen because of the possibility of taking a crappy cell phone picture and making it even worse by cropping and applying a tacky filter, making it "artistic".

tl;dr Facebook/Instagram are overhyped crap and I have little to no sympathy for anyone who expects Facebook to run a charity business.

annoys

[sacrilicious]

From the article:

"We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an e-mail.

So this guy's name is "A. Noyes". I find that fitting somehow.

(I usually don't go for the ad hominem humor, but can't help myself in this case, sorry)

Re:Suing Instagram?

[Jetra]

Okay, if you read the ToS, it clearly states that it is subject to change. You can't sue because you agreed to it. It's not about the highest bidder cause FB could get the crappiest lawyers and still win. It's not my fault you agreed to it and are now bitching that they are changing it so you can't profit from it.

Where can I obtain the corporate...

[3seas]

...book of lies?

Re:Suing Instagram?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Okay, if you read the ToS, it clearly states that it is subject to change.

They can change ToS as much as they want, but are all the possible changes legal? In some countries, you can't usurp copyrighted works like this, no matter how much the site operator declares to have the right to do whatever the f**k he wants to.

Why You Don't Surrond Yourself With Synchophants

[assertation]

The Instagram move has to be the most brain dead decision from the tech world since Google Buzz.

In both situations any ordinary person would be asking themselves

"How could they NOT think that this decision would upset their users, big time?"

To be un-PC, not everyone who works in tech, especially management has an autism spectrum disorder.

That leaves management surronding themselves with and reweard synchophants.........yes men, who insulate them from reality, letting them make assinine decisions like this one.

They deserve to be sued.