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Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

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Re: Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

#191

I was about to delete my Instagram account when I saw this, but having given it a bit of thought, I'm actually ok with it. Instagram needs to get money from somewhere, and as far as I'm concerned selling my photos is preferable to filling the feeds with ads. However I can see how for a lot of people they'd rather have ads then have their photos sold (especially pro photographers) so it'll be interesting to see how ma…

I am likely to delete my Instagram account because of this—this isn't going to out well for them at all and not just because of licensing issues.

Legally, they will be in deep trouble the first time they sell any pictures with people in them because none‡ of them will have signed a model release.

I'm not OK with giving them resale rights to my pictures.

‡ A tiny fraction of a tiny fraction will have, but that release will be with the photographer. Tracking that down will be their responsibility.

Re: Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

#192
post #42
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as i read that FB was buying Instagram i quit and deleted my Instagram account. It was too predictable that something like this will happen. Mark Zuckerberg is in a horrible position. I bet he would love to just build a cool and useful product. Instead he is damned to roll out all these awful money making features. And quick. Not only for his investors but also for the staff that owns FB stock. How smooth cou…

Trust is earned. Zuck hasn't earned it yet. Not in the eyes of Wall Street. Look what Bezos had to go through to get where he is today: http://i.imgur.com/2ie9t.png

It should be noted that Bezos also had significant bond issues that nobody thought they could make payments on. They were down in the junk bond basement. If he had failed to make those payments, Amazon would have become yet another failed dot com, just like eToys. (Which went out of business while making a profit - just not enough profit to make bond payments on excess warehousing purchased because they overestimated growth for 2000 after underestimating it in 1999.)

Re: Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

#193
This is a phenomenally dumb move. Instagram is (was) cool because of the absence of ads or any other monetization features. It was free, simple, clean, and fun. Now it begins the slow march towards a crowded, busy, ad-littered experience. And this is really bad press.

In my opinion, the decline starts now...

Re: Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

#194
post #110

There's an ethical and an unethical way to do this. Not being able to opt out, and changing the system wholesale overnight like this, is deeply unethical. On the scale of things they could do that would make this better: * Best case: opt-in only, compensate users whose photos they use. * Present a choice to users when they sign up, default to opt-out. * At least present a choice to existing users whether they want th…

Didn't the same thing happen with Scribd?

Re: Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

#195
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I agree with this. I think the social connections on Instagram are much weaker then on Facebook (hence my comparison). The moment Instagram appears not to be in fashion anymore people can leave without giving up much. Granted, I'm not an Instagram user so I could be entirely wrong but the network effects of Instagram don't seem to be strong enough to push their users around too much.

Oh, I think you're right there. My point is that the people who use it won't care about this issue - this isn't the thing that's going to drive them away. It's far more likely to be something less damaging but more obvious to users, like in-feed advertising.

It's sad that we agree on this.

Re: Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

#196
Instagram's new TOS[1] state:

  To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.
In other words, they're trying to monetize Instagram a similar way Facebook is - Sponsored Posts - your photos and associated data can be promoted by companies without having to notify you about it.

Furthermore under Section 106: Exclusive rights in copyrighted works aka. 17 U.S.C. § 106[2] Instagram cannot sell your photos and it cannot use your photos and alter them in any meaningful way.

Having said that Instagram could have communicated this better as this hasn't helped the situation either.

[1] http://instagram.com/about/legal/terms/updated/

[2] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html

====

NOTE: Also posted this at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939663

Re: Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

#197
Is there a lawyer around? How legal is this?

It's one thing if instagram uses a picture of you for advertising purposes, since you have agreed to their ToS. However, how do they know which pictures are of you and which are of other people? They shouldn't have any legal right to use pictures of other people for advertising purposes, as far as I understand, because there is no contract involved.

Re: Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

#199
You can easily move your instagram photos to Flickr with this web app we created today if you don't like their policies.

http://freethephotos.com

We wanted to move ours, so we built this handy thing and decided to release it. Let us know if you run into any issues.

Re: Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

#200
"you acknowledge we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, and commercial communications"

Translation: You accept that we may try to trick you.

I'm an intellectual property lawyer and I think the intent behind the above language is quite clear. It is not aimed at alleviating an undue burden of identifying commercial content (as Instagram might suggest), it's about reducing transparency to allow for marketing tactics that would not likely be viewed favorably if they were obvious to the user. While under no legal obligation to do so, Google has been identifying sponsored content for over a decade. If we were to begin by looking at "standard practice" then we might start there.

I think it's great that people are reading TOS from web companies and making their concerns known. We might call this negotiation. If you accept that idea, then I think users are in an excellent bargaining position. They can walk away at any time. They can adapt and they can find new alternatives. These companies however may not be able to find new audiences so easily. I believe they will take the feedback very seriously and respond, with new language if necessary.

I'm noticing some of my friends on Facebook who were using it extensively for one purpose or another are now closing their accounts. Other friends of mine cannot use Facebook because of their employers. It seems clear to me there are both costs and benefits to using Facebook or Instagram and that sometimes the costs may outweigh the benefits.

Keep reading TOS. It is good for the web.

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