Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

news.cnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 213 posts

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

#11

Post by praptak »

polskibus wrote: post #8

It doesn't matter who the target market is. This can create a precedence, and make other "social" enterprises greedier. While I understand a contract can specify almost anything and there's always "if you don't like it, don't use it" way of looking at this, but there should be a basic sense of decency among all that claim to be serving the wider public.

Sense of decency often loses against profit. That's why I think this quote from RMS is relevant when it comes to the old "if you don't like it, don't use it":

"All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people's rights with one hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That's what democracy was invented for!"

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

#12

Post by krichman »

ryanhuff wrote: post #6
batiudrami wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram's target market doesn't care. These aren't professional photographers, or even amateur ones like flickr, they're teens and 20-somethings with camera phones who want to be able to take and share cool photos with their friends.

I bet celebrities will care when their picture unknowingly appears in some ad.

UIAM you can't publish an advertisement with someone in it until they sign a model release form.

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

#13

Post by sgdesign »

Irishsteve wrote: post #2

Wow. Wonder if their users will be bothered to care

I wouldn't much care about my Facebook statuses somehow being used as advertising, or even my tweets for that matter. They're just things I've said publicly and social networks have trained me not to expect any control over them anymore.

On the other hand, photos are much more personal: they're works of art, at their own level.

So I think whether you care or not depends not only on your stance regarding privacy and all that, but also how you frame your use of Instagram: is it a way to post status updates disguised as photos, or photos disguised as status updates?

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

#14

Post by nwh »

krichman wrote: post #12
ryanhuff wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet celebrities will care when their picture unknowingly appears in some ad.

UIAM you can't publish an advertisement with someone in it until they sign a model release form.

You supposedly read and agreed to the TOS, aren't they effectively giving your permission?

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

#15

Post by polskibus »

praptak wrote: post #11
polskibus wrote: post #8

It doesn't matter who the target market is. This can create a precedence, and make other "social" enterprises greedier. While I understand a contract can specify almost anything and there's always "if you don't like it, don't use it" way of looking at this, but there should be a basic sense of decency among all that claim to be serving the wider public.

Sense of decency often loses against profit. That's why I think this quote from RMS is relevant when it comes to the old "if you don't like it, don't use it": "All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people's rights with one hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together impose limits on what the rich can do to the res…

Decency does lose against short-term profit, esp. when we're talking about public companies. However, there are companies that somehow strike a better deal with their shareholders and try not to screw their customers all the time.

I found Roger Martin's book "Fixing the Game" to descibe interesting case studies and proposals on how to fix the short-term greed problem. Perhaps Instagram's board should read it?

For such simple services, reputation is all there is. Building next photo sharing service is easy (perhaps already free on github?) and competitors are waiting for Instagram's slippage.

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

#16

Post by [deleted] »

sgdesign wrote: post #4

I'm starting to realize that Instagram is not the service I thought it was. I initially thought it was Flickr with social features, but more and more it's turning into Facebook with photos. There is zero content discoveries features, so you have no way to get new followers or find new people to follow. And the top posters are all teenage pop stars that I've never even heard about who post completely uninteresting pho…

[deleted]

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

#17

Post by callmeed »

This is going to get interesting.

I know several professional photographers who use Instagram regularly (and are worth following). I suspect this will not sit well with some of them. I'm especially curious if Instagram will let people leave and remove their old photos easily.

Some of them also post professional images they've imported from their computer (not just phone images).

For example, here's an image taken by Jose Villa (high-end wedding photographer) for Williams Sonoma's gift registry: http://instagram.com/p/STxUVcrodv/

What's gonna happen when IG sells ads with those kind of images?

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

#18

Post by rhizome »

polskibus wrote: post #8

It doesn't matter who the target market is. This can create a precedence, and make other "social" enterprises greedier. While I understand a contract can specify almost anything and there's always "if you don't like it, don't use it" way of looking at this, but there should be a basic sense of decency among all that claim to be serving the wider public.

Well sure, and we've been seeing the revenue frog boiling for some years now, but companies will eventually get too greedy, and an ungreedy alternative will steal everybody away. Instagram is a gimmick that pretty much anybody can copy, and the network (FB) is pretty much the only gateway to the future they have, and is the only edge they have over anybody else. I wouldn't be surprised if a Hipstamatic resurgence gets fed by the mere ability to display pics in Twitter cards. Nobody cares about the URL.

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

#19

Post by greenyoda »

ryanhuff wrote: post #6
batiudrami wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram's target market doesn't care. These aren't professional photographers, or even amateur ones like flickr, they're teens and 20-somethings with camera phones who want to be able to take and share cool photos with their friends.

I bet celebrities will care when their picture unknowingly appears in some ad.

The point about the model release form is interesting. While you can sign away your own rights to your photos, you can't sign away the rights of friends and strangers who appear in them.

According to Wikipedia[1]:

"Publishing an identifiable photo of a person without a model release signed by that person can result in civil liability for whoever publishes the photograph."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_release

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

#20

Post by Smrchy »

sgdesign wrote: post #4

I'm starting to realize that Instagram is not the service I thought it was. I initially thought it was Flickr with social features, but more and more it's turning into Facebook with photos. There is zero content discoveries features, so you have no way to get new followers or find new people to follow. And the top posters are all teenage pop stars that I've never even heard about who post completely uninteresting pho…

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 could FB move along if their investors trusted them like they trust Jeff Bezos and his very long-term view.

Post reply on HN