Instagram: We Won't Sell Your Photos

hugheseyau writes "Earlier, we discussed news that Instagram introduced a new version of their Privacy Policy and Terms of Service that will take effect in thirty days. The changes seemed to allow Instagram to sell users' photos, and many users were upset. Instagram now says 'it is not our intention to sell your photos' and that 'users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos.' This is good news for Instagram users." And so closes another chapter of "We Let Lawyers Write a Legal Document and The Internet Freaked Out."

cynic

[codegen]

The cynic in me sometimes wonders if this is something they do on purpose. Publish new outrageous terms of service and then wait for the internet to explode. Wait a few hours more and then come on with a ready appology. A lot of people have enough invested in a particular site that they won't leave right away, and with an appropriate "apology" are molified. And a lot of exposure is thus gained. But given that other competitors are ready to swoop in, the other part of me dismisses it.

Too little too late

[morcego]

This is a classical example of how a mistake can cost you users forever.
Earlier today, I removed all my photos and deleted my account. After that, I started trying other apps and services, and actually found one I like more than Instagram.

So yeah, I could go back, but I won't, simply because I found something else that I like better and, truth be told, moving back is simply not worth the 5 minutes it would take.

Does this make a big different for me ? Nope, which is why I wasn't even looking for an alternative before. This whole fiasco pushed me to look, and I'm not going back.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:They still have the rights...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I think we can assume that they will strike some balance between profitability and user outrage.

It isn't hard to imagine the day when facebook goes the way of all the others that have come before like myspace, geocities, etc. At some point along that line they will value their ownership of our photos more than they will value their reduced userbase. Then it becomes a simple business decision to liquidate and sell off their copyright in those images to another company, perhaps getty or another stock photo site which has no interest in anything beyond reselling licensing rights to the photos. Photos that have already been conveniently tagged by the suckers^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h former users.

Re:Damn lawyers

[PRMan]

The only entity I know that does this is the NHL rule book. There is an accompanying "Situation Guide" which explains the original intent of the rule and some situations in which is should and should not apply.

Re:The First Rule

[argux]

There are at least 285 rules of acquisition [memory-alpha.org].

Re:They still have the rights...

[Swampash]

Actually the new bits in the Terms of Use that offend me the most aren't really even related to photos and what Facebookstagram will do with them. It's shit like this:

- We can share not just your photos but anything we know about you with Facebook and then Facebook can share that info with any company it is in a relationship with. Things we know about you include but are not limited to where you are.

- We can show you ads without telling you they're ads. And because we're part of one of the most aggressive tech-savvy ad companies that has ever existed, you won't even know they're ads. You'll just click "like" because we'll use awesome photos that we know you'll like and then we'll sell what we've learned about what you and your friends like, and how easily we got you to like it.

- If you're under 18: by using this service we will treat you as if you have your parents' consent for everything in these terms. You're not legally able to enter a contract but by default we will act as if you have.

I don't care how much backtracking and spin Instagram tries to put on it, I'm out. Photos backed up, account deleted.

Re:The First Rule

[CastrTroy]

The reason they do this is so that they can show your pictures to other users of Instagram without getting sued. Dropbox does the same, because otherwise, they wouldn't be able to implement the shared Dropbox feature. Since you (presumably) own the copyright on whichever photo you upload, technically, if you didn't grant them any rights, they wouldn't be able to create copies, or transmit the image to other users of the system. So, in order to cover their ass against users who would upload a photo and then claim copyright infringement when they shared said photo with other users on the system, it's just easier to create an all encompassing clause which grants them the ability to actually do the stuff they need to be able to do. If in a month they introduce a new feature, that lets you do something else with your photos, or they want to make them into a new thumbnail size, they don't want to have to ask your permission to generate a bunch of new thumbnails. People have tried to sue Google for spidering their site, and I don't know if anybody was successful, but I'm sure it created a bit of a headache for Google to have to deal with it. If they really don't want their stuff indexed, they can set their robots.txt file appropriately. But instead they'd rather bring up a lawsuit. Instagram doesn't want to deal with stupid little lawsuits like this, so this is why they create these clauses.

Re:Typical slashdot attorney bashing

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Lol the law and judge opinions aren't written in LATIN.

While that was not the OP's point, it is ironic that you focused on it because it is demonstrably not true.
Modern legal code is littered with latin phrases. [wikipedia.org]

Re:We Won't Sell YOUR Photos

[Opportunist]

"Nobody has the intention to build a wall"

--Walter Ulbricht, first secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of the GDR, 2 months before the Berlin Wall was built.