Taking bets on how long this will last?

Instagram said today that it has the perpetual right to sell users’ photographs without payment or notification, a dramatic policy shift that quickly sparked a public outcry.
The new intellectual property policy, which takes effect on January 16, comes three months after Facebook completed its acquisition of the popular photo-sharing site. Unless Instagram users delete their accounts before the January deadline, they cannot opt out.

Under the new policy, Facebook claims the perpetual right to license all public Instagram photos to companies or any other organization, including for advertising purposes, which would effectively transform the Web site into the world’s largest stock photo agency.



  1. spsffan says:

    A very Nelson like Ha Ha!

    What did you expect from fuckbook?

  2. bobbo, we think with words, and flower with ideas says:

    Don’t a lot of website claim ownership of all submissions? Justified in some situations, not in others?

    Say DU–what about all the excellent Haiku’s, spoonerisms, and one liners I have posted here? Who owns them? Me?-You?-The guy I stole them from??

    Intellectual Property. Go back to our American Indian roots and consider who really owns what and why?

    RICH = CRIMINAL.

    • deegee says:

      Yes, you are correct, pretty much every site or server service has it written in their EULA that they own all content that is uploaded.
      Even cloud computing services (google, microsoft, et al) have in their EULA terms that they own everything on their servers. So all of these stupid companies who are moving all of their business files onto cloud services don’t realize that they have just assigned rights to whoever owns the service or servers.
      Some of the services have taken a lot of flak over this, and have reworded their EULA’s a it, but from a legal standpoint, what is on their server is theirs.
      The owners of the services or servers also have liability, such as if the users uploaded illegal content.

      • MattG says:

        Deegee – The T&C’s of a business cloud service that someone actually hands over cash for is substantially different from a consumer service that is “free”. The willingness to hand over money for the service imbues the companies offering the service with a willingness to negotiate terms that is completely proportional to the amount of money changing hands. It’s a proof of the much used, and completely true Dvorak aphorism, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product.

        If a companies legal rep is stupid enough to allow a contract with a data ownership law like this to get signed, then that company probably has bigger problems.

        • bobbo, we think with words, and flower with ideas says:

          So–deegee is substantially correct.

          but let me get this straight===a company worthy of the name would actually have any business work product in the cloud?

          Ha, ha. Who owns it once in the cloud seems to me to be a very secondary issue.

          ……….so………are businesses really moving to the cloud==other than maybe insignificant marketing BS and what not?

          I never would—even just for myself==much less any business I have owned.

          • MattG says:

            Some businesses are moving some data to cloud services. Most I see that are doing anything meaningful are really only doing a shared services move to a managed data-centre that has been re-branded as “semi private cloud” by adding a slightly different charging model.

            The few companies I have seen move functions to a fully public cloud service have mostly had a bad experience either in performance, service quality, or service reliability. The exceptions are salesforce.com, which still surproses me as this is a move of extremely critical data to any comany, and companies that have moved data that is needed, but not business critical to them. E.g. student email for a university.

          • MattG says:

            *surprises

          • bobbo, we think with words, and flower with ideas says:

            Awwwh Matt—you don’t think we are smart enough to figure that out?

            So NON NEEDED BS like student email? That is totally fine.

            I’d think the cloud should perform flawless as data storage and retrieval so its the data manipulations or actual data “processing” that they haven’t got right yet? Seems like if an app works off line it should work in the cloud?===but I really don’t know.

            I’m not even much of a security/privacy nut “but” I don’t show my stuff in public. Wouldn’t be prudent.

          • MattG says:

            Hey Bobbo – I’m answering this straight, sorry If I’ve misread the context of your comment.

            “Works offline, so should work in the cloud” – correct, but.. It creates a couple of issues even if it works.
            -Data service risk, its adding another component to the service which is a comms channel that is generally outside the control of the customer. It always increases the risk that the application won’t be available to the business.
            – Sovereignty risk, the data is not under your control and will be in a shared facility where a security breach for another company could effect your data.

            The risk cost of these (and often more importantly, the perceived risk cost) needs to be of lower value to the opex gain to make moving an app to a hosted service worth it.

            As for student email – “Non needed BS” is not quite the right paraphrasing. In this case the value to the company paying for the service, i.e. the University, is in the provision of the service, not in the data itself.

            Giving the students email makes their interactions easier so providing it to students has value. The student data is the students problem though, the college takes no respnsibility for its safety. As long as the students can email in their assignments and questions they are happy.

    • dusanmal says:

      This is actually much more about who can be sued not who owns what. The worst (combined) part is a) Instagram can use your photo without any notice for their own ads. b) If there is any problem with their usage of your image, you get sued.
      Simple example: average, not pro-photographer uploads image to Instagram with some recognizable people in it (NOT famous, just enough resolution to be recognized by those who know them). More than half Instagram images fit this description. Instagram likes the image and without informing anyone uses it for Instagram ad (web, print, TV,… whatever). Person(s) in the image see the ad and $ signs. They sue, as law properly allows. By virtue of this new agreement Instagram who did the deed is innocent and non-prosecutable. People sue pants off the simple person who has no idea about ads, contracts and image releases for ads…
      Simple person is one wityh the target on their back if they now use Instagram. It is not just about protecting Instagram from users actions. It is making Instagram immune to their own legal abuses…

      • bobbo, we think with words, and flower with ideas says:

        Hmmmm….. sounds bad…..but “usually” if there is a wronged party everyone responsible has to pay. can’t insulate yourself by contract with some other third party.

        course, I think there is special legislation immunizing IP but only for what they host on line? Not what they produce and put on line themselves?

        Monster??? Sea?????

        Damn Lawyers.

  3. The0ne says:

    hahaha. Free only until they collected enough of you and everyone else to screw you however they want. Google does it, Facebook…everyone other company that wants profit 🙂

    Don’t be naive people,

  4. MikeN says:

    It can sell your photos without payment, and if you put up something that you are not allowed to sell, and Facebook gets sued then YOU have to pay the royalties. Oh, and you automatically agree to any changes in terms of service that they post in the future somewhere on their site.

    What do you expect from a free service?

    For that matter, that last part is similar to Obamacare and IPAB board that dictates what services are acceptable medical care.

  5. Alfie says:

    It’s crap like this that caused me to ditch FB and switch to Mutineer.

  6. ECA says:

    Iv warned people that THE NET IS A PUBLIC PLACE..
    DO NOT EXPECT PRIVACY..

    You are expecting a CORP to NOT do its best to make MORE MONEY…NO WAY in hell will this happen.

  7. mojo says:

    I always refer to Facebook and it’s ilk as “self-submitted dossier” sites.

  8. MikeN says:

    I should add,

    What’s Instagram?

  9. msbpodcast says:

    I keep my photos/files on my server, back it up locally, store a backup in a TB drive once a week in my safe deposit box at my bank, and back up the encrypted content onto the cloud.

    Suspenders and a belt?

    I’ve learned paranoia the hard way.

    • advisor_in_absentia says:

      The same applies to safe deposit boxes at banks. The banks own them, and their contents. When the banks went bust the federal regulators came in and opened all the boxes and confiscated the contents. Then the people who thought they owned the contents had to request the contents back. An example of this was just in the last past decade when a woman, whose father deposited gold in the safe deposit box, before the gold confiscation of 1933, lost her rights to the gold because her father “should” have given the (thieved) gold to the federal government in the ’30s.

  10. Captain Obvious says:

    I’m loving the mock outrage. Instagram always had an expansive license. Why weren’t people freaking out a year ago?

  11. Supreme Ultrahuman (I see the comment system is still designed for retards.) says:

    This makes me want to open an Instagram account. I could post tons of pictures of my dogs taking a dump. I’d like to see them try to make a profit off that.

    Kinda like how I pollute Google’s file on my by searching for random nonsensical shit whenever I can.


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