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Instagram's official response

blog.instagram.com

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Re: Instagram's official response

#81

Post by cube13 »

w1ntermute wrote: post #54
jonknee wrote: post #21

Take it with a grain of salt. They tried to sneak this by and it blew up in their faces. While under oath, Kevin Systrom: “No, we never received any offers,” Reality, Instagram had an offer from Twitter and Kevin Systrom had direct knowledge. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/disruptions-instagr... That said, at least it looks like they're going to tweak the TOS change in favor of their users. But with Faceboo…

> That said, at least it looks like they're going to tweak the TOS change in favor of their users. But with Facebook pulling the reigns, we all know where this will end. I think the fears are really overblown: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-te...

While I agree that the facebook fears are probably overblown, the TOS' language does not comfort me at all. In fact, I think that the Verge is entirely wrong in that article(IANAL, etc.).

This TOS tweak allows Instagram go sell your content for advertising purposes to a third party. They can use your images, as is, in their advertising(presumably on Instagram, though that is not clear). So they can take payment for your content, without compensating you at all.

That's a pretty huge difference from Facebook's TOS. In there, they state that they will use your content to deliver ads. They're not delivering your content to other parties to be used in their ad campaign.

Re: Instagram's official response

#83

Post by ianstallings »

What blows my mind about this whole mess is how quickly this community has gone off on some witch hunt. Just read the comments. This is apparently what you have to look forward to if your startup is successful and you eventually try to monetize. Good luck everyone.

Re: Instagram's official response

#85

Post by cynicalkane »

jonknee wrote: post #21

Take it with a grain of salt. They tried to sneak this by and it blew up in their faces. While under oath, Kevin Systrom: “No, we never received any offers,” Reality, Instagram had an offer from Twitter and Kevin Systrom had direct knowledge. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/disruptions-instagr... That said, at least it looks like they're going to tweak the TOS change in favor of their users. But with Faceboo…

Read your source more carefully, and stop selectively quoting. Systrom spoke of formal, written offers. The Twitter offer was a verbal agreement. I do not know my corporate contract law but it would surprise me if these were the same thing.

Re: Instagram's official response

#86

Post by shabble »

jaggederest wrote: post #47
comice wrote: post #14

What they claim their intentions were is unimportant. They were granting themselves irrevokable rights to do things people didn't ever want them to be able to do.

A possible negative scenario: They grant themselves these rights and then get spun off / acquired by someone with malicious intent. The rights never expire... Can you guarantee that your company will respect the rights of users a decade from now? A century?

Also, you now can't ever sell exclusive rights[1], because there's a perpetual sub-licence capable party floating about out there.

[1] IANAL, but I think that's how it would work; for any licenceable aspect which you wish to grant exclusively, they can grant the same to one or more others, making it non-exclusive.

Re: Instagram's official response

#87

Post by mpyne »

cynicalkane wrote: post #85
jonknee wrote: post #21

Take it with a grain of salt. They tried to sneak this by and it blew up in their faces. While under oath, Kevin Systrom: “No, we never received any offers,” Reality, Instagram had an offer from Twitter and Kevin Systrom had direct knowledge. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/disruptions-instagr... That said, at least it looks like they're going to tweak the TOS change in favor of their users. But with Faceboo…

Read your source more carefully, and stop selectively quoting. Systrom spoke of formal, written offers. The Twitter offer was a verbal agreement. I do not know my corporate contract law but it would surprise me if these were the same thing.

> Systrom was asked about formal offers. The Twitter offer was a verbal agreement.

Verbal contracts are still contracts. Written form is preferred because it's easier to enforce after-the-fact, not because it's required for legal contracts.

And either way, Systrom would have taken an oath to "tell the truth, and the whole truth". This type of glaring omission over quibbling about whether an offer was a "formal" offer or not would get most in trouble with the courts...

Re: Instagram's official response

#88

Post by w1ntermute »

hugoroy wrote: post #78
w1ntermute wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, at least it looks like they're going to tweak the TOS change in favor of their users. But with Facebook pulling the reigns, we all know where this will end. I think the fears are really overblown: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-te...

No they're not. This article from the Verge is weird. The important changes are in the copyright license. The instagram blog post is lying by omission. Look at the former section "Proprietary Rights in Content on Instagram" > Instagram does NOT claim ANY ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or any other materials (collectively, "Content"…

> No they're not. This article from the Verge is weird. The important changes are in the copyright license.

A reply from the author of the article in the comments[0]:

> You guys know that I used to be a copyright lawyer, right? This stuff is all boilerplate terms of service — every service from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, etc all have it.

0: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-te...

Re: Instagram's official response

#89

Post by Vivtek »

chmars wrote: post #80
chadillac83 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By posting on HN you are agreeing to my peer-friendship ToS. As part of this ToS you hereby grant me unfettered access to your personal finances. edit: give me a $1

Thumbs up for letting me go to bed in a very happy mood … :)

And at the low cost of only a dollar! I think grandparent's onto something big here.

Re: Instagram's official response

#90

Post by spangborn »

nemof wrote: post #82

A little bit of balance for the pitchforks crowd: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-te... This story is giving me a headache.

It's already been pointed out that the Verge ignored several important pieces of the ToS when writing that article - take a look at the comments both on HN (for other articles) and The Verge to see.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4940062

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