Live data from Hacker News

Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

news.cnet.com

31–40 of 213 posts

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

#31
This is not new. It seems that their new TOS explicitly lays out that your photos may be used in advertising, possibly due to a new law somewhere requiring specific notification and release, but my understanding is that you'd already given them this right based on this clause:

By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly ("private") will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.

Yes, that's in the old TOS, and it's pretty much boilerplate for any site with user-generated content. That language certainly seems to me like it would cover uses in advertising or even Instagram reselling your images as a "stock photo" site. This kind of clause is required so that users can't attempt to entrap the service provider by uploading content and then claiming that Instagram didn't have a license to utilize it and therefore had violated copyright, and also probably as a fallback policy in case a cranky user spotted their image in a stream or feed or video or something (or, alternately, that the server is hacked and db is leaked, and thousands of claims of "unauthorized use" come flooding in).

IANAL but pretty much this is a non-story. They've simply decided to specifically inform you that a license to " non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels" includes use in advertisement, as one would reasonably believe it does.

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

#34
What a wonderfully missed opportunity. Had they decided to share profits from content with authors they could attract more professional photographers to their service. I can't imagine any pro author will publish beautiful photos on Instagram now, and I suspect the service will just be flooded with amateur photos. And who is going to pay them for that?

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

#35

So the claim that Instagram is establishing the right to sell your photos is supported in the article with this language: It says that "a business or other entity may pay us to display your... photos... in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you." I read this as intended to say "when we display your photos (as part of our own service), we may serve up ads to be display…

You glibly ignore the previous paragraph that references the section which establishes the rights for Instagram/Facebook to do whatever it likes with the Content.

And since when is "intent" ever part of US law (especially with regards to IP)...

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

#36

This is not new. It seems that their new TOS explicitly lays out that your photos may be used in advertising, possibly due to a new law somewhere requiring specific notification and release, but my understanding is that you'd already given them this right based on this clause: By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully…

I don't think you are correct. The old TOS did not allow them to resell your pics. Also note they are saying your private pics will now be fair game as well.

You are correct that the old TOS seems pretty standard, but these changes are not trivial.

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

#37

What I am trying to figure out is: does this apply to 'private' accounts as well? I see no statement that seems to exempt private accounts from these new policies, but would definitely like to hear a conclusive statement regarding this.

I think it's fair to say that private accounts are probably not covered, but it would be nice for Instagram to make it clear one way or another.

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

#38
post #3

Unlike Facebook, I don't think Instagram can afford these antics.

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.

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.

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

#39
post #34

What a wonderfully missed opportunity. Had they decided to share profits from content with authors they could attract more professional photographers to their service. I can't imagine any pro author will publish beautiful photos on Instagram now, and I suspect the service will just be flooded with amateur photos. And who is going to pay them for that?

Yep, make that an opt-in feature, add some light ads, and you have a full business model.

I believe they may have just wanted to spare themselves the headache of a money system and of people who would reupload other people's pictures or copyrighted works for their own profit.

Post reply on HN