The Official National Geographic Instagram has now suspended posting on the account.
instagram.com/p/TZaMHuoVRh/
instagram.comPosted Dec 19, 2012, 1:20 AM UTC
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instagram.comI am not a smart man and I don't understand legalese; But doesn't National Geographic has some lawyers as well who would understand this stuff? So isn't this kind of indicative of their distrust?
12
National Geographic is clearly not taking ANY chances here. If they used one of my photos in an ad, it wouldn't be a big deal. But if they use a photo that NatGeo paid a guy's salary for six months, to sit in a jungle in some far off land, and wait for a bird that only one other human has ever seen. That's a big deal. I can't blame them for being cautious. Instagram needs NatGeo way more than NatGeo needs Instagram.
58
That would be butt-fucking retarded from instagram's point of view. If they really were planning on selling photos, I feel like they would probably red-flag 'high risk' accounts to stop any of their stuff from being whored out. Legality is always about who has the bigger legal department, not about who's right.
But let's be honest, they're going to revise the TOS again to eliminate this ambiguity, everyone will forget about this in a week, and the world will keep on spinning.
3
Legality is always about who has the bigger legal department, not about who's right.
No, it's about who has more money.
I can outsource and hire 100 Nigerian lawyers for $100, but won't be able to do much against a $100 one.
On a similar note, who would you rather fight?
-5
Pretty sure he wasn't talking about outsourcing to Nigeria when he said bigger legal team.
-1
Pretty much. It doesn't matter what Instagram says, if it's in the ToS that's what's enforced.
you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service,
Most other companies include a line thereafter "...The license expires once you delete the content from the service or terminate your account." That quite effectively hinders the way they can use the content. Most honorable sites even include that the license you grant them is only for the site and service itself.
After Jan 16. what you really do when you upload a photo to Instagram is the full usage rights to the photos. They really can do anything with them, legally.
14
The language you quote above seems to be different from the excerpts in the Verge article. Where did you find it?
2
Right here, from the horses mouth: http://instagram.com/about/legal/terms/updated/ Relevant is 1. under Rights:
1.Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service, except that you can control who can view certain of your Content and activities on the Service as described in the Service's Privacy Policy, available here: http://instagram.com/legal/privacy/.
7
isn't this language pretty generic across all services?
0
Most other services include a "This license will terminate once you remove the content or delete your account". Instagram seems to lack it. Also, why do they need the license you give them when you upload your content to be transferable and sub-licensable if they're not going to be using your content outside of the service itself? It really does sound like rights grabbing.
For example, when I sell images to clients that I take at events I certainly do not give them the rights to transfer and sub-license the images, and my clients have no need for those rights. Why would Instagram need them, if not to use the commercially outside of the service itself?
Here are similar clauses from other Photo related social networks:
CONTENT SUBMITTED OR MADE AVAILABLE FOR INCLUSION ON THE YAHOO! SERVICES
Yahoo! does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Yahoo! Services. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services, you grant Yahoo! the following worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable: ... b. With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Yahoo! Services solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Yahoo! Services and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Yahoo! Services.
Note the lack of need to sub-license and transfer the license in the yahoo rights? These are by far the best I've read.
What rights do you claim over photos uploaded to 1x? 1x only claims the right to display your uploaded photos on our site. 1x.com also claims the right to display small thumbnails of your photos on other sites, like Facebook, linked to 1x. 1x does not claim the right to sell your photos if you have not decided to participate in print sales. All rights still belong to the original copyright holder. It is not possible to delete individual photos from 1x.com, but if there are legal reasons, contact support with your request and we will help you out. If you no longer wish to be a member of this community, you can request deletion of your account and all your photos will be removed after a grace period of three months, so you have the chance to change your mind.
What rights do you claim over my high resolution files of published photos? We don't claim any rights over high resolution uploads, we just store them. When participating in a book project, we will specifically ask for your permission to use a certain image. If you participate in print sales high resolution files are used for printing and might be used for marketing prints. You can remove a photo from print sales at any time by unchecking the checkbox in "Account" -- "Print sales". For extensive information about the terms and conditions for print sales go to "Account" -- "Print sales" and click "read and signed the agreement" to the right. Your high resolution digital files will never be sold or used for anything else than specified in the book and print sales contract if you have signed them.
No real terms on their legal page except for this FAQ.
Content Submitted Or Made Available For Inclusion On The Service
Please read this section carefully before posting, uploading, or otherwise submitting any Content to the site. By submitting content to the site you are granting 500px a worldwide, Non exclusive license to use the content and are representing and warranting to 500px That the content is owned or duly licensed by you, and that 500px is free to publish, Distribute and use the content as hereinafter provided for without obtaining permission Or license from any third party.
In consideration of 500px’s agreement to allow you to post Content to the Site and 500px’s agreement to publish such Content and for other valuable consideration the receipt and sufficiency of which are hereby expressly and irrevocably acknowledged, you agree with 500px as follows:
You acknowledge that:
By posting Content to the Site you hereby grant to 500px a non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content in connection with the Services. This license will exist for the period during which the Content is posted on the Site and will automatically terminate upon the removal of the Content from the Site;
The license granted to 500px includes the right to use your Content fully or partially for promotional reasons and to distribute and redistribute your Content to other parties, web-sites, applications, and other entities, provided such Content is attributed to you in accordance with the credits (i.e. username, profile picture, photo title, descriptions, tags, and other accompanying information) if any and as appropriate, all as submitted to 500px by you;
Subject to the terms of the foregoing license, you retain full ownership or other rights in your Content and any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights associated with your Content.
A bit iffy, but as you can see here the license ends once you remove the content from the site.
The key difference for instagram is the inclusion of sub-licensable and a transferrable license. Something they definitely don't need to run a social network. The second very iffy thing is the lack of mention that the license will expire once you remove the content from the site.
11
ok, the sub-licenses I guess I do not understand. But 500px has transferable as well. I assume this is so they can print it?
I had somewhat overlooked the lack of license expiration as people tend to focus on the "worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license" part. Which is what I have likely mistakenly focused on as well.
I'm going to gather the wording of the ToS was meant to allow them to use your picture to advertise. Which, to me, I was expecting and thus didn't care about what I posted on there. Though, sneakily using geo tagging for potential endorsements (this was brought up some where as a possibility) would certainly be shady (tho, again, I don't geotag most things).
1
500px also has a transferrable and sub-licensable license, so it would seem to be almost identical to Instagram's.
1
No? Isn't this was Facebook just said a few weeks ago they weren't doing when everyone panicked about ownership of their content?
1
I can stand up at a press conference and claim to be the Queen of Sheba but that does not make it true. With this change in TOS Instagram have turned themselves in to a stock photo business without having to pay you for your work, turning round and going "no need to panic no we haven't" without actually changing anything in the TOS is just flat out total bollocks. It may not effect 99% of users but you have magazines and pro photographers who will be ripe for the picking - a nice chunk of money is in celebrities who twin twitter with instagram, suddenly all those photos they uploaded for fans will be available for sale to magazines and tabloid newspapers.
2
That's the old ToS. The new ToS is actually more restrictive in terms of what Instagram can do with your photos (the old ToS lets them full-on sell photos, the new one restricts them to pairing with ads), but people are more up-in-arms because it makes it more clear exactly how the photos are getting used.
-3
Then why is my quoted text taken from their new ToS? The new ToS is worse than the old one.
5
I wonder if NatGeo knows how many redditors rehost their photos on imgur?
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They're not making a profit off of it.
-1
But NatGeo is losing page hits for content they funded, which reduces their ad revenue, which reduces the budget to pay photographers, so that self-centered redditors can get karma in r/earthporn.
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[deleted]
-6
Like sharing torrented movies?
5
There was a chap on here about 6 months ago who found out that his most popular selling print by a clear mile was being shared everywhere both on imgur and on facebook. His sales of that picture dropped to near 0 and he had to discontinue it.
If someone had sold it he could have sued them and got some of his money back. If people on here and facebook had linked to his website then they would still have seen the picture and he would have benefited from the exposure. Re-hosting is the devils work, it's probably best if at least the photographers amongst us show some solidarity and directly link to the source.
2
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They released that statement and failed to actually change anything, also that they flat out lied when they said “our users still own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos.” Nat Geo also didn't buy into the bullshit either which is where we are at now.
1
I think they should stop posting pics on their Instagram but not delete their account. Keeping it would keep impostors away.
1
I'll leave this here: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-terms-of-service-what-they-really-mean
-8
erm lol, this part is still in the ToS
you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service,
Most other companies include a line thereafter "...The license expires once you delete the content from the service or terminate your account." That quite effectively hinders the way they can use the content. Most honorable sites even include that the license you grant them is only for the site and service itself.
After Jan 16. what you really do when you upload a photo to Instagram is the full usage rights to the photos. They really can do anything with them, legally.
10
If you want, you can go through all my other comments regarding this. TL;DR, they don't have full licensing of your photograph so they can't do anything they want with them (only granting part of 17 USC 106 to them).
1
Guys look. They messed up their wording, there is no way they want to become a stock company. Even if they were stiffing photographers it is still rather expensive to run that kind of service. Last year shutterstock made around $100 million in total sales, maybe $20 million of that was profit before tax. There is just no way Facebook wants to take on becoming a photography agency, they Make much more than that of their ad revenue in a month.
-9
So next time someone makes you agree to something objectionable in a contract, you'll just agree and say "Oh, you're just messing up your wording. Silly you! Where do I sign?"
19
I rather suspect if Buckingham Palace uploads a picture of wills and kate's new baby to facebook/instagram thus giving them the rights then thats far more than $20 million in profit right there.
0
That seemed obvious, never understood why people thought your stuff was being directly sold.
But it was rather clear to me the intention was to use your photos as a method of advertising. It's a free service, that's always the method. With that, national geographic probably wants to cover their asses right now
-2
I didn't even get to follow them and they close down because of some horse shit the internet made viral. Internet, you annoy me sometimes.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/18/a-valencia-filtered-middle-finger/
-10
I think Facebook's horrid reputation preceded them here, to an extent; stuff like this is just plain old irresponsible avarice — yet par for the course for some users: http://readwrite.com/2012/12/11/why-are-dead-people-liking-stuff-on-facebook
There is absolutely no way I would trust that level of ineptitude with my work, on a network so large. With that in mind, the instagram TOS is pretty scary.
I don't disagree with you, but I can also understand why people freaked out.
4
There is substance to this though.
3
At least we have some journalists to provide a voice of reason. Thank you MG.
1
[deleted]
-14
THEY NEVER MEANT THEY WOULD SELL YOUR WORK.
"We're not actually changing the terms of service. We're just going to promise you that we totally don't mean the things we said in there."
I'm sold.
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[deleted]
-7
Yeaah, that does not change the wording in the ToS which effectively let's them sell your photos.
6
Keep in mind that Kevin Systrom is currently under investigation for lying about the sale of Instagram to both his investors and federal regulators, and the evidence looks very damning (i.e., he insisted Facebook was the only one interested in acquiring Instagram, but hid an offer from Twitter).
Which isn't to say he's lying about this, but I'd be skeptical about the integrity of these statements.
Lawyers are very highly paid, highly competent people - they do not mis-phrase legal contracts. Instagram wanted to leave the door open for some things they thought about exploring in the future, and now they're backing off from the backlash. This whole "we never thought to do X" is just damage control. They did think about it, they probably weren't going to pursue it immediately, but they drafted the legal language to leave it open, and got caught.
Either way, Instagram's TOS has never been friendly towards content creators. NatGeo is a bit late to the party - if they really cared about the integrity of their IP on Instagram, that ship has long since sailed. Unlike 500px, Flickr, or SmugMug the license you grant Instagram by using their service was already far-reaching even before this whole business.
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[deleted]
-5
(a terrible business move, a highschooler could have guessed the outcry that would happen)
Startups have gotten away with worse. There was a good chance they'd have gotten away with it. The tone of a community is really difficult to measure.
Just a question, why would he hide an offer from Twitter? Couldnt Instagram have received a higher price had twitter and facebook got into a bidding war?
Facebook's offer was much higher (nominally, $1bn and thereabouts) than Twitter's ($525m). In all likelihood (I'm not Kevin Systrom, so I can't say for certain) there was an incentive to not get into a bidding war and just close the higher-value deal quickly.
Of course, in hindsight, Twitter's stock is doing well while Facebook's has tanked, leading to some investors feeling very screwed by not having been given the choice, or even the heads up that such an offer actually existed.
Facebook was also closing in fast on its IPO, Systrom may have wanted to make that deadline and cash in something fierce. The Instagram deal was $300m in cash, and $700m in Facebook stock, after all.
Note that this wasn't a simple "oops we didn't tell you", Systrom lied under oath to California state regulators and stated that Facebook was the only party to make an offer for the company, and reportedly when given the offer by Twitter's representative, he read it and refused to keep the paper, and insisted on conducting communications in person rather than over email.
None of this speaks very well to the upstandingness of Instagram.
10
erm lol, this part is still in the ToS
you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service,
Most other companies include a line thereafter "...The license expires once you delete the content from the service or terminate your account." That quite effectively hinders the way they can use the content. Most honorable sites even include that the license you grant them is only for the site and service itself.
After Jan 16. what you really do when you upload a photo to Instagram is the full usage rights to the photos. They really can do anything with them, legally.
7
Of they won't be directly selling your work. They will be selling the ability to use your work without your knowledge or say so by other companies that paid for it.
You still own it, but so do they, and they don't have to tell you how they are using their co-ownership of your work on their site.
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[deleted]
-9
You are an ill informed photographer, sir.
5
Can you show me in the Flickr tos please.
4
With a Flickr account, you also have to have a Yahoo account, and agree to their terms.
With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Yahoo! Services solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Yahoo! Services and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Yahoo! Services.
3
let's start a scorch earth campaign and mass upload only poop pictures on instagram. i mean literal poop: human, pet, the creativity is boundless.
There are already many in the Reddit archives if you do not have your own.
It's not that hard to create some anyway.