Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57559710-38/instagram-says-it-now-has-the-right-to-sell-your-photos/

by ValentineC • 14 years ago

502 201 14 years ago

news.cnet.com

Irishsteve• 14 years ago

Wow. Wonder if their users will be bothered to care

sgdesign2• 14 years ago

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?

znowi• 14 years ago

> social networks have trained me not to expect any control over them anymore

I think this is the major issue that will define the internet landscape in the long term. People indeed got trained not to care about privacy and just like with "war on terror", they gradually give up their rights and freedom for the sake of "security" and "better user experience".

Soon enough anyone who speaks out of user rights or privacy will be seen as a mad man akin to RMS these days. 10 years back, a site, which required a scan of your government issued ID in order to change your name would be deemed insane. Now it's a common practice.

Welcome to the Matrix, gentlemen.

jmathai3• 14 years ago

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

batiudrami2• 14 years ago

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.

ryanhuff• 14 years ago

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

jmathai3• 14 years ago

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.

justindocanto• 14 years ago

Exactly why I deleted my account, and are many others. Hopefully that will get their attention. If not, so long! =)

sgdesign2• 14 years ago

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 photos.

The more Instagram turns into Facebook, the more this opens up a spot for another company to build an actual social network around photos. Whether this will be 500px, Flickr (again), or somebody else entirely, I don't know.

Smrchy• 14 years ago

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.

artursapek• 14 years ago

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

I never looked at it that way. Great thought.

readme• 14 years ago

You say it like they have a reason to!? Amazon had a solid plan.

I think facebook could make quite a bit of money if they charged for their developer API.

wilfra2• 14 years ago

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

kloncks• 14 years ago

What's the alternative? A cool and useful product that makes revenues how? How do you propose that Instagram actually make money?

Not attacking. Just wanted to hear more specific thoughts.

chris_wot2• 14 years ago

Mark Zuckerberg made his own bed. He can't be trusted no matter what you say, just look at how Facebook handles privacy!

evoxed3• 14 years ago

I've always had issues with certain details on Flickr (perhaps since the Yahoo acquisition; I honestly can't remember what was just carried over) such as the inability to download all your photos at once for backup, lockout of your own photos when your pro membership expires (combined with the aforementioned non-feature), and some other things. But as far as I can tell, the community is definitely there. Whenever I am doing research on1 particular piece of equipment or materials (chemicals mostly) I'll often find a fairly helpful discussion on Flickr, and with plenty of well-tagged shots to back it up.

Earlier this year while I was staying in Ginza for the weekend a spring popped inside one of my lenses. I have some experience repairing and rebuilding mechanical SLRs (not so much lenses) but without any tools or parts I was hoping to find a repair shop nearby that wouldn't break the bank. Ended up finding a pic on Flickr from someone who had the same issue a few years ago of him and the repairman with his Victor Hasselblad diploma, and his business card. Totally random place on the 8th floor in San-chome, but he was a great guy who I never would've met if not for that post.

i386• 14 years ago

What would you have them do when your Pro a account expires?

neilk3• 14 years ago

Flickr never locks you out of access to your photos, per se.

The only difference is that your photostream is limited to 200 photos. Every other way that photos are accessed continues to work - whether you've embedded them on blogs, other people favorited them, etc.

There are 3rd party tools to export your photos from Flickr via the API. Flickr hasn't written their own exporter (they probably should) but exporting apps aren't blocked.

Terretta3• 14 years ago

> I've always had issues with certain details on Flickr (perhaps since the Yahoo acquisition; I honestly can't remember what was just carried over) such as the inability to download all your photos at once for backup

The dozens of Flickr downloader apps, and countless free scripts on GitHub, let you not only download them all for backup, but often will keep them in sync with folders. Even iPhoto has this sync built in.

> lockout of your own photos when your pro membership expires (combined with the aforementioned non-feature), and some other things.

They notify you before it expires, and said tools take not long at all.

What's more, their policy is incredibly generous: they retain all the photos for you, and when you re-up, everything's back as it was. That's extraordinary customer service.

chandru89new• 14 years ago

well i sure hope it's Flickr again!

zemo• 14 years ago

>There is zero content discoveries features, so you have no way to get new followers or find new people to follow.

Instagram has had an Explore view for a while now.

>And the top posters are all teenage pop stars that I've never even heard about who post completely uninteresting photos.

To be honest, I look at a lot of Instagram data because I work on a photo sharing startup that uses their API extensively, and the network as a whole is completely dominated by teen girls vying for each other's attention. The amount of content they create and consume is mind numbing.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

So, how big is the target market for over saturated photos of someone's dinner?

biesnecker• 14 years ago

A billion dollars?

polskibus2• 14 years ago

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.

praptak• 14 years ago

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!"

polskibus2• 14 years ago

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.

ericHosick• 14 years ago

From a much much more cynical view: Democracy was created so the rich could convince a majority to tie the hands of a minority.

rhizome• 14 years ago

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.

ritratt• 14 years ago

Wait don't we already do this and accuse proponents of SOPA etc. of curbing our freedom under the excuse of piracy?

chris_wot2• 14 years ago

No.

callmeed2• 14 years ago

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?

mtgx2• 14 years ago

Why is he even using Instagram? Doesn't seem like he used any filter there, did he? Seems like he's just using it to promote his own DSLR-made photos. Google+ might be a better target for that kind of community.

slig3• 14 years ago

His target demographic is on Instagram and not on G+, I'd guess.

wilfra2• 14 years ago

It's a distribution channel - one where all the cool kids currently hang out. He could also be on G+ and Facebook and Twitter and Quora and Reddit and MySpace...and...and...

The technology of each is basically irrelevant if there is an attractive audience, as all of us participating on this site clearly demonstrates.

eropple• 14 years ago

Instagram is commonly used to upload pictures for linking on Twitter, which is a considerably wider social network than Google+. I expect that'll change pretty rapidly pretty soon.

untog5• 14 years ago

Because Instagram has a huge audience. Google+ might be a better place for the photos, but it doesn't have an audience.

callmeed2• 14 years ago

He has a huge following (of both brides and other photographers) and enjoys taking pictures I'd guess.

And, for the record, he still shoots film (not a DSLR) :)

mikeleeorg• 14 years ago

I wonder what this means for http://instaprints.com.

Deestan• 14 years ago

To my understanding, it means Instagram can do a direct deal with Instaprints and cut out the "sending profits to the artists" cost.

Paul123455342• 14 years ago

Just glancing at it, it seems the photos sold there are from users who signed up to have their photos sold there. Under the "Turn Your Instagram Photos Into a Profitable Online Business" at the bottom.

thinkling3• 14 years ago

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 displayed next to them and not give you a cut of the proceeds".

I don't mean to argue that the language can't be interpreted to let FB sell the pictures but it doesn't look to me as intended for that purpose.

In any case, the usual scenario of virtualized user outrage will be followed by backpedaling by Instagram. 2% of the user base will vow to never use the servie again, and then all will go on as before.

drucken• 14 years ago

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)...

thinkling3• 14 years ago

You seem to argue (by the use of "glibly") that the presence of the transferability clause leaves no other interpretation possible than that that transfer will be for use of user content by third part in return for payment. However, the clause may also be there to allow use of content on other services owned by Instagram's parent.

I was quite explicit that I was giving my read of the intent, not my assessment of what Instagram could legally get away with. The transferability clause does not change my reading of the intent.

thinkling3• 14 years ago

Bingo! In Tuesday's blog post, Mr. Systrom sought to quell the mounting unrest and reassure users that the company would not be peddling photographs of children playing on the beach or friends partying in nightclubs to the highest bidder.

"To be clear, it is not our intention to sell your photos," he said.

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/facebook-responds-to-anger...

arondeparon• 14 years ago

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.

declan4• 14 years ago

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.

ForFreedom• 14 years ago

Let them sell one with your kid then you can sue their ass off.

cookiecaper3• 14 years ago

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.

aptwebapps• 14 years ago

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.

nwh2• 14 years ago

This is exactly why TOS should show a diff or revision history. Failing that, there really ought to be an external website documenting changes.

declan4• 14 years ago

Agreed with aptwebapps. The old TOU, as you correctly say, is pretty standard. Twitter's is similar, and any company with decent lawyers is going to protect themselves with similar wording.

The new TOU, however, heads in a different direction. The phrase "limited license" is gone. It's been replaced with the phrase "transferable, sub-licensable" license. Also new is "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."

Transferable is a very important word. So is sub-licensable. Those were NOT in the old terms of use.

001sky2• 14 years ago

The phrase "limited license" is gone. It's been replaced with the phrase "transferable, sub-licensable" license.

-- Material Adverse Change. For the consumer.

cookiecaper3• 14 years ago

It really doesn't seem like a material change to me. Again, IANAL, so if there is some reason to believe these things would be disallowed under the old TOS, I'd like to know, but it sounds fairly straightforward. While Instagram may have had a more difficult case under the old TOS, and may have had to be more careful about the dispensation rather than just doing a blatant "stock photo"-type interface, I could definitely see an attempt at the argument that representation in "any media formats through any media channels" covers Instagram in most cases of what would be considered "transferred sub-licensing".

The clarifications, of course, are intended to clarify the consent they're taking. I'd be interested to know their motives for this; as I speculated in the parent, does a new law take effect in an important market with regard to advertising? Are they just trying to play it safe? Are they going to make aggressive moves into this kind of space (reselling user photos, using users' profiles without consent in advertisements) and wanted to ensure that they didn't have to deal with any lawsuits upon launch?

I will agree that the new TOS allows them to use your profile and likeness as they see fit, which based on my simple layman's reading, isn't included in the old TOS.

Just thinking out loud here, move along.

djt• 14 years ago

Its about how it occurs to the general public. HMers know that if they want to they can use your images, but I have seen people on my Facebook and Twitter saying this is too far and theyre not posting to Instagram anymore.

sgh_1• 14 years ago

I agree... that is how you create news where it does not deserve one... I don't think Instagram would like paying billions of dollar in privacy suits for a 10$ photo.

this is just an anguished news writer probably snubbed by Facebook...

rjsamson2• 14 years ago

That old TOS is pretty standard language required for any online service to show photos that you upload. Flickr, Google, etc are all pretty similar. A few times a year a bunch of FUD springs up among more old-school photographers who become terrified that such language means that Flickr (or Google) wants to steal and own all of their images.

These new TOS however - absolutely appalling. In the past year we've seen professionals flock to instagram to help promote their craft - with the new language I'd imagine you'll see a mass exodus from those folks pretty quickly.

fleitz• 14 years ago

Perhaps those professionals should contact Instagram about the valuable service they provide and how much they can pay for this service that promotes their business.

I'm shocked, shocked to find out that Instagram plans to monetize their service via advertising.

npguy• 14 years ago

Let us move away from these services, into a more distributed model:

http://statspotting.com/2012/12/instagrams-policy-changes-is...

ThePinion• 14 years ago

Anyone else completely see this coming at this exact point in time when first hearing the acquisition announcement?

CWIZO• 14 years ago

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?

devcpp• 14 years ago

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.

jrogers653• 14 years ago

I'll just leave this here - http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creato...

mwill• 14 years ago

I hope casual and regular Instagram users riot over this change (doubt it, really), honestly, not for their sake, or to spite Facebook or Instagram, but simply because I'd really hate it if they started doing this, and it turns out to be an awesome money maker. I don't look forward to a web where that precedent is set.

wildranter• 14 years ago

So long Intagram, and thanks for all the fish.

spacestation6• 14 years ago

deleting your account is futile, photographs will still remain on their AWS account.

after deleting one of my accounts, I was suspicious that they would still keep the photographs.

So to test this, I made a dummy account named after where i live; nikkojapan http://instagram.com/nikkojapan/

i made a quick pointless photograph just to upload http://instagram.com/p/K8bx_ZB59K/

Here is the link that still exists to the photograph of an account that was deleted right after the Facebook acquisition announcement. http://distilleryimage6.instagram.com/6d96aaa0a45611e1a9f712...

TeeWEE2• 14 years ago

Isn't that against their privacy policy?

spacestation6• 14 years ago

"privacy policy"...This is Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook we are talking about and a guy named Kevin Systrom that falling in line very subserviently.

meerita2• 14 years ago

Deleting the photos doesn't work even?

spacestation6• 14 years ago

I would say no... I "deleted" these photographs back in May.. and they are still on AWS.

54mf4• 14 years ago

This is actually kind of a big deal. Have you sent this info to any tech blogs?

spacestation6• 14 years ago

I have commented on blog posts of tech blogs about it using ...but, they hasn't been noticed yet.

spacestation6• 14 years ago

how do you suppose I should approach them..

PJones• 14 years ago

Just tried deleting a photo, and it looks like they remove the image straight away in that case: http://distillery.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2010/10/08/92944289...

Hopefully it just takes a little time when deleting the account to go through and delete the individual photos, but I'll be deleting the individual photos before I delete my account to be safe.

hamoid2• 14 years ago

I've been trying to delete individual photos and I think they limit the rate at which you can do this. I feel it's something like 10 photos per hour. If I try to delete more, they just pop back in on my Android phone.

spacestation6• 14 years ago

I need to note that the date I "deleted" my photographs was May 25, 2012. That is 7 months ago and still in the possession of Facebook.

Also, I forgot to include the screenshot of the photograph being hosted on the dummy account just before I deleted it and the account; http://spacestation.co/I1ry

dr_faustus• 14 years ago

Dont worry! The founders of instagram where afraid of this as well and they devised a poison pill before they sold out! All you images have been made useless for any commercial use by the application of shitty "lets make it look like a polaroid left in the sun for 30 years"-filters...

deanclatworthy• 14 years ago

Presumably Instagram would not have the right to sell photos from people that restrict the viewing of their photos in public. I have my profile set up so only those people I "approve" to follow me can see them.

pdonis• 14 years ago

The language in the TOS says "you can control who can view certain of your Content and activities on the Service". Note that key qualifier: on the Service. It does not say that you can control who can view your Content by other means; so if they sold your photos to someone else who made them viewable through some other means, you can't control that. At least, that's the way I read it; IANAL.

TeeWEE2• 14 years ago

Since you cannot delete all photo's at once, i deleted my account.

daimyoyo• 14 years ago

Didn't help. [1]

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4936807 [1]

wib• 14 years ago

I'm having a real hard time deleting my account, because I used plus addressing in the email when I signed up for Instagram. This is making it impossible for me to log in to the web version of Instagram which is as far as I can tell the only way to delete an account… Suppose I'll have to write support, if there is such a thing.

planetjones• 14 years ago

The new flickr app (albeit very late) looks a whole lot better proposition then Instagram.

To value Instagram at a billion dollars (well less now I guess because of Facebook's share price) is insane. They have a serious problem with spam - every photo I upload is liked by many getM0refollowers<RandomNumber> and every photo I upload is bombarded with spam comments. They seem incapable of getting a grip on this problem.

The app also has bugs e.g. it says I have X followed but then displays X minus Y when I try to view who they are.

Its popular photos are rubbish - so there is no way to discover interesting photos other than searching for tags you're interested in. Photos with a 1000 likes appeal to the teenage market only i.e. they're not serious photos.

When you follow someone you get very large photos dominating your stream, so I don't follow many people because of this.

I really hope flickr aggresively try and take back this market. Instagram is a neat idea, but has very poor execution.

neilk3• 14 years ago

I don't really know what Instagram is really worth, but it might have been worth a billion dollars to Facebook to keep Instagram away from Twitter. Twitter + Instagram is starting to look like a viable Facebook competitor.

Although we know now that Twitter is choosing to become a walled garden with a very limited kind of service, a year ago it seemed possible for them to become a sort of internet infrastructure.

Terretta3• 14 years ago

If you like Flickr's new app, you may love FlickStackr.

kanakiyajay• 14 years ago

This is totally unfair . Now shifting to Flickr

InstaByeBye• 14 years ago

InstaByeBye.com coming soon. 1 Click exports and online photo log. Stay Cool. 3 hours and counting. Live update = @instabyebye

kmfrk5• 14 years ago

My main concern as a passive user is finding a way to export likes and follows. I haven't really posted that many photos, but there is still something to lose as a lurker.

MattBearman• 14 years ago

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 many users they loose over this.

Also it goes with out saying that if they do put adverts in, I'm out.

ScottWhigham• 14 years ago

I don't understand why people have downvoted this yet far more inane comments that are older haven't been downvoted as much (case in point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4936978). This is an "expressed opinion" - it's not "inane banter" (like this one: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4936806) - yet people have downvoted it because they disagree. It doesn't express the hive mind thus the downvotes rain in. So weird...

jonknee3• 14 years ago

It sounds crazy, but what if they let you pay for your use of Instagram? You pay them money, they give you a service and no one has to argue over IP.

shardling• 14 years ago

As pointed out elsewhere, it's more than a little weird that they could use pictures you took of your friends. Even if the chance is incredibly small, I'm not ok with that.

And since it's not worth the hassle of constantly being mindful of what I'm uploading, I'm going to delete my account. Which is a pity, since Instagram's photo app seems to do a lot of nice automatic color balancing compared to the native Android app. :(

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

Personal call, I suppose, but if I take a picture of a friend of mine and then that photos hows up in a weight-loss ad on the subway, I am probably going to lose a friend.

declan4• 14 years ago

Matt: It is, as you say, likely a deal breaker for aspiring or pro photographers. And in the end it's also a case of "their servers, their rules."

But there's a difference between telling users clearly this is what you're doing, and putting it in the headline of a blog post, vs. inserting this language into the middle of a terms of use agreement. I don't think anyone here begrudges Instagram making money. But being upfront with the users who just made the founders $1B (well, maybe $700M) is something that's not unreasonable to expect.

halostatue• 14 years ago

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.

kmfrk5• 14 years ago

Posted some related stories:

* [Instagram's suicide note](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4934271)

* [Instagram Will Share User Data With Facebook According To Its New Privacy Policy](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4932765)

The last one may be more interesting than the usage rights for photos.

bdcravens• 14 years ago

Those are both the same HN URL - looks like you mistakenly copied the URL for the 2nd by the 1st. :-)

kmfrk5• 14 years ago

There we go, thanks. At least the most important one was the one that was copied. :)

chrisconnell• 14 years ago

Instagram isn't about to become iStockphoto. There's no way they're going to let people buy pictures of other people to do what they want with them. More likely they want the option to use photos to help advertise. For example showing photos taken at a hotel on the hotels website or on the hotels facebook page without users moaning that they're being used without permission.

Paul123455342• 14 years ago

Those sorts of uses are exactly what some more professional photographers would want to prevent. It's exactly why I never uploaded any of my tens of thousands of scenic photos to Panoramio. People can use their API to display photos on their sites.

http://www.panoramio.com/api/widget/api.html

http://www.panoramio.com/api/widget/api.html#conditions-of-u...

jnazario• 14 years ago

for those of your jumping ship, here's three tools that can help you grab your instagram photos as a ZIP or migrate them to another service:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/limyunghui/2012/12/18/export-ins...

hamoid2• 14 years ago

I just found out about http://i-am-cc.org/ They propose releasing your Instagram images as CC. What I don't understand is what effect, if any, will that have on Instagram using your images for creating ads or for other uses. How would a CC license affect in this situation?

mseebach• 14 years ago

> How would a CC license affect in this situation?

Not at all. When you upload your photos to Instagram, you grant them a non-exclusive license to use them in accordance with their TOS. Licensing them under CC is just issuing another non-exclusive license to another party.

hieronymusN2• 14 years ago

I fully understand that with a free product, I am the product. I go into that with eyes open, and happily used Instagram assuming they would eventually start serving ads near the photos, promoting photos or similar. However, using my photos as ads seems a bit of a stretch. So, I just happily gave Flickr $25 after deleting my Instagram account. Some things are worth paying for, because sometimes I don't want to be the product.

bad_user6• 14 years ago

With Flickr you're still the product unfortunately, although Flickr is much better than other similar services in this regard. Do you really think your measly $25/year cover for their expenses with you?

Seriously, if you don't want to be the product, organize those photos in a standard directory structure and synchronize it either with Dropbox or Google Drive or SkyDrive.

The downside of doing that is that storage is more expensive, but that's closer to the real price the service is worth and so that makes it sustainable. Also, migrating between cloud storage solutions is much easier.

Shameless plug - try Dropbox by clicking the following link, and we'll both get a small bonus: http://db.tt/x1XoSUnE

untog5• 14 years ago

The downside of doing that is that storage is more expensive

No, the downside is that there are zero social features when you put your photos on Dropbox. Flickr is better, but still not anywhere near Instagram.

54mf4• 14 years ago

"Do you really think your measly $25/year cover for their expenses with you?"

Actually, yes. Hard drive space is incredibly cheap, especially at their scale. My photos aren't terribly popular, so they aren't using much bandwidth either. I probably cost them $5-10/year, tops. In fact, I'm probably one of the majority, the ones who subsidize the heavy, uber-popular users with tens of thousands of followers who upload hundreds of photos a year.

ceejayoz2• 14 years ago

> With Flickr you're still the product unfortunately, although Flickr is much better than other similar services in this regard. Do you really think your measly $25/year cover for their expenses with you?

Oh, absolutely. I store a backup copy of my entire Flickr library for something like $5/year on Amazon S3, and the service hasn't exactly had insane development costs the past few years - design and feature set have stayed pretty steady.

hieronymusN2• 14 years ago

I think that my $25 will keep Flickr/Yahoo from pulling the same shenanigans Instagram currently is (I've been using Flickr since 2006, just went Pro today). And for that $25 I get a hell of a lot more features than Instagram ever provided (privacy, API, full size photos, etc). All my photos are stored on my phone or hard drive, Flickr is just for sharing. Seriously.

papsosouid• 14 years ago

>Do you really think your measly $25/year cover for their expenses with you?

That is WAY more than they need to cover expenses. Storing and serving static content is very cheap.

Osmium• 14 years ago

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 this or not, and allow them to continued access to the service either way.

* Notify users and only change the rights when any new photos uploaded, and keep existing photos under the old terms.

* Give existing users the opportunity to deactivate/delete their account if they don't agree, and a chance to download their photos. Or "freeze" existing accounts until they acknowledge the changes, rather than automatically assuming consent.

They seem to have picked the absolute worst option available to them, and it's troubling to say the least.

killahpriest• 14 years ago

It seems that you can opt out by selecting to be a "private" user.

SIULHT• 14 years ago

Didn't the same thing happen with Scribd?

sailfast• 14 years ago

I noticed awhile back that Instagram branding was appearing in television commercials, such as recent Taco Bell ads about Doritos Locos. If companies are using Instagram content for branding it makes sense to try to change the license agreement to capitalize if you're focused on monetizing an acqusition. As we've seen, however, it will certainly anger a solid chunk of the user base.

Nick Tran, social media lead for Taco Bell talks a bit about the campaign in the below article: "http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/13959.html

jakeonthemove• 14 years ago

I doubt this policy is going to last long - the biggest and most important Instagram users as far as I can tell are celebrities (incl. professionals and other popular persons), and they sure as hell will do something if Instagram starts selling/licensing the photos to anyone who wants them.

Coupled with the other big mistake of separating themselves from Twitter, I'd say Instagram is well on their way of becoming the next MySpace.

FireBeyond• 14 years ago

I'd suspect that on the flip side, if Instagram does intend to do this sort of thing, they will have a well-curated list of "who not to piss off".

That being said, said celebrities, professionals and popular persons also agreed to the same TOS...

debacle• 14 years ago

While this isn't reddit, this would probably be a good time for that "That escalated quickly" picture.

I'm surprised Facebook is moving so quickly to try and monetize Instagram. I wonder if they're using it for experimentation of what their user base will accept. Regardless, I think this is probably a step too far in the wrong direction.

Will Facebook and Instagram be able to clamp down on users with the right acrobatics to keep their userbase and increase their ARPU? Either way, these seem like shady tactics.

nakedrobot2• 14 years ago

As infuriating as I find this, I am afraid that many people won't care.

Worse, I feel that FB/Instagram will backtrack from this, and nearly everyone will forgive them. Not me. They have shown their true colors. I'm out. I won't let them sell me down the river.

Classic negotiating tactic - ask for WAY too much, then backtrack a bit, and you get more than people would have possibly let you have, had you asked only for that in the first place.

stalf• 14 years ago

Isn't it possible to use app.net to build an Instagram-like network without this whole monetizing problem?

rwhitman• 14 years ago

Isn't this how YouTube policy works as well? As I recall YouTube is always the rights holder - if a YouTube video is played on TV the TV program pays royalties to YouTube and the user gets nothing.

tibbon• 14 years ago

Didn't we expect that they'd need to find some way to make money off us?

edwardunknown• 14 years ago

So if I repurpose a photo I found on Instagram and it becomes the next Obama "Hope" poster I have to pay the photographer and Instagram? That would be lolled out of court.

Same thing with selling people's personal pics as stock photos, it doesn't matter what the user agreement says, that ain't gonna fly in front of a judge.

It would be like putting a sticker on the back of a picture frame that says whatever you put in here now belongs to Frames incorporated, NAL but it seems to me however legally binding it claims to be it wouldn't pass the smell test in court.

JeremyBanks• 14 years ago

In no case does this require you to pay the photographer and Instagram. It would be legally possible for you to pay the photographer or Instagram.

This change means that Instagram could license photos published through their service to you without compensating the photographer. You always have the option of licensing the photos directly from the photographer, in which case Instagram isn't involved at all.

mosselman• 14 years ago

I am shocked. Weren't social media platforms to be our friends and respect our privacy, pay for servers and programmers without anything in return?

vegas• 14 years ago

Hipsters begin losing interest in instagram at a reliable rate.

igorgue2• 14 years ago

Question, with these new rules, can you still sell your pictures?

Unless you live under a rock, you know that many "Instagram girls" sell their posts to clothing stores to promote them, it's actually hugely successful!

joshbert• 14 years ago

I've been living under a rock, then. Although, it's fairly ingenious.

igorgue2• 14 years ago

Maybe because I have friends doing fashion, I know it goes from 500 bucks a pop. A girl with about 100K followers. And she would say something like this:

"Awesome glasses I got them from example.com use code EXAMPLE50 for %50 off on all their inventory"

I wonder if that's still legal. Or maybe Instagram can automate that!

dschiptsov• 14 years ago

People still wondering that someone not just paying the bills, but making money in the first place, and that all these "free" services are about making money by aggregating and selling user-generated content, logs and statistics?

There is no other working model, btw.

nphrk• 14 years ago

The copyright issue can be a bit tricky. Assuming that Instagram goes on and sells users' pictures - who's liable if somebody uploads a picture which he/she doesn't own, and then Instagram goes on and sells that to a third party?

darkarmani2• 14 years ago

More than that -- how is Instagram getting model releases for everyone in the photos?

jaredcwhite• 14 years ago

I'm beginning to adopt a "I don't sign up for your service/social network if you don't know how to make money other than sell me someday" mindset because I'm sick of being burned. First the Twitter debacle, and now this. Instagram should be inspired by App.net, not Twitter. Sorry guys, I'm canceling my account. Flickr is starting to show signs of promise as a decent photo service again, and I'll happily pay them money for a Pro account.

Buh bye Instagram. Hope that ad thing works out for you. (Not.)

mcguire• 14 years ago

If we assume that the good folks at Instagram (or at least their lawyers and public relations people) are not complete idiots, then they have no intention of actually following through with this change. Here's a prediction: it will be dropped due to "user feedback" or some such in a week or so and everyone will have a warm, fuzzy feeling.

The question is, what do they actually want to accomplish by floating this trial balloon?

state• 14 years ago

Is there an open alternative that anyone would recommend?

jscheel• 14 years ago

Guess I'll have to continue not using Instagram. All joking aside, this was the worst possible time for them to do this, considering Twitter and Flickr both attacking their space more and more now.

stephenhuey• 14 years ago

Instagram-export service Instaport is returning 500 errors:

http://instaport.me/

500 Internal Server Error

nginx/0.7.67

kmfrk5• 14 years ago

They're understandably under heavy load. It worked fine, when I tried it, though.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Wow, that was not entirely unexpected, but rather poorly executed. I would have hoped there would be a grace period were you could either remove material or mark it in such a way that it wasn't tagged with this right.

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

If only Android let you one-click share to any social network you wanted and included all of the photo manipulation and filter features of Instagram. Oh wait.

mleeds• 14 years ago

The hardest thing about legalese: trying to convey intent and write something specific at the same time. The intent may be in the category of “don’t be evil”, but the user never knows. And while it is easy to say “well, just stop using the service”, the impact of networks is that it makes it less realistic to use another service. Just another signal that we live in a “Caveat User” world…

felipesabino• 14 years ago

Get ready for the biggest duck face/bathroom mirror stock photo sale of all time

dgurney• 14 years ago

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...

itsprofitbaron• 14 years ago

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

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

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.

darkarmani2• 14 years ago

I think you are right. There are two rights involved with this: copyright and model releases. Only the person in the photograph can sign away the rights to their likeness. I'm not sure how they'd be able to use these photos in a commercial manner without model release for each person in the photos.

dimmedwit• 14 years ago

I'm not sure how Instagram has obtained my photos, but I will not stand for this.

thekevinjones• 14 years ago

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.

reasondiscourse• 14 years ago

"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.

Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos

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