Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Rhossydd on December 18, 2012, 08:19:33 am
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20767537
I wonder how many millions of images they'll get and how many users they'll loose.
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I don't think so; the urge to be published, even for nothing, is so strong (witness penny stock sites) amongst non-professional image makers that they might even get a larger base from which to draw material when some realise that it may be a route into publication.
Regarding the morality of the issue, that's a different thing altogether, and I think it disgraceful. But then, I have no Facebook, Twit or other such service to which I subscribe my presence. I would rather sell nothing at all than offer my goods or services at shitty prices, and the idea of being a willing rape is horrific to me.
Rob C
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I haven't used Instagram, but I have a (mostly dormant) Facebook account. This just may be the nudge I need to cancel Facebook.
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People are really complaining that Instagram now has the right to sell their over processed pictures of lunch, shoes and selfies?
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People are really complaining that Instagram now has the right to sell their over processed pictures of lunch, shoes and selfies
Whilst most of Instagram is rubbish, you can also find some credible work on there.
It has had some 'serious' users, National Geographic, Time magazine, Bloomberg Business Week etc.
If I were a user I'd not only be peeved to find my work was being sold on for Instagram's profits, but possibly more concerned with the lack of control of how images were being used.
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People are really complaining that Instagram now has the right to sell their over processed pictures of lunch, shoes and selfies?
Hmmm... if it is worth something to Instagram, it is then worth something, no?
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This is a comment on that article.
"I love Instagram and I have over 1700 photos on it, they are small images and I would not post anything i'd not want the world seeing as my account is public. I would feel rather proud if they used any of my photos! If you don't like it then leave Instagram :-)) Simple."
Says it all really..
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I am not worried so much about Instagram, I don't and will not use it. However, it's the precedent it sets.
For sake of argument, if the Instagram policy holds, what other photo sharing websites will claim the same thing down the road? Notice there is no "opt out" unless you delete your entire library. even there, I am not 100% certain. Usually those End Users agreements you have to click on are pages and pages long, so maybe the web site has a backup copy of your images they can some day use?
Call me paranoid or an idiot for thinking so, I've been called much wosre in the past I don't care, it's just establishing a precedent that others may follow that in the long run, bothers me.
joe
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I am not worried so much about Instagram, I don't and will not use it. However, it's the precedent it sets.
For sake of argument, if the Instagram policy holds, what other photo sharing websites will claim the same thing down the road? Notice there is no "opt out" unless you delete your entire library. even there, I am not 100% certain. Usually those End Users agreements you have to click on are pages and pages long, so maybe the web site has a backup copy of your images they can some day use?
Call me paranoid or an idiot for thinking so, I've been called much wosre in the past I don't care, it's just establishing a precedent that others may follow that in the long run, bothers me.
joe
People should probably keep a close eye on who Instagram buys out in the future. The interweb seems to love consolidation, so if it buys out the sites where your pics reside, that is also a risk it seems to me.
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This is a comment on that article.
.... I would feel rather proud if they used any of my photos!..."
What people who say this usually haven't considered is who "they" are. Will they still be so proud if their images get sold to and used to promote a company or cause they disagree with ?
I know a couple of Intagram users who would be appalled if they found their images were going to be used to promote an organisation that supported vivisection, others that would hate their images to be used by certain political parties.
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I think you are taking an assumption too far, the fact that they are actually thinking!
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I'm just echoing other views, but Instagram is and always has been a business. They have to make profits, especially now that Facebook owns them. They have shareholders to satisfy.
Yes there are more legitimate users, but National Geographic and other similar companies use Instagram as a marketing tool to connect with users of that demographic. I would not think they are concerned with this change in ToS. If they are, they probably have left already.
Given the other options they have, this is the least intrusive to the users.
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This is a comment on that article.
"I love Instagram and I have over 1700 photos on it, they are small images and I would not post anything i'd not want the world seeing as my account is public. I would feel rather proud if they used any of my photos! If you don't like it then leave Instagram :-)) Simple."
Says it all really..
I was just about to post that, with exactly the same comment. The infinite monkey paradigm will lead to one or two good images being found among the staggering quantities of dross; but would the effort prove financially worthwhile?
Jeremy
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Given the other options they have, this is the least intrusive to the users.
Indeed, burying right grabs in T&Cs is 'unintrusive'. It's also not very fair.
I fully appreciate that services like this have to be funded somehow, but there must be less surreptitious ways of doing it.
The Flickr model, so many free then pay a subscription could be an option. Charging a modest subscription for the app or a micro payment per upload could also work. If they really feel there's enough revenue to be gained from the user base, maybe offering a chargeable opt-out would be fairer.
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I never subscribed to Facebook or Instagram for this reason.
If you don't pay today, someday they will get money from your work.
I only post to Flickr with a Pro account. Recent Yahoo! head management change is look promising by now.
Paolo
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People should probably keep a close eye on who Instagram buys out in the future.
Or rather, if you are worried about what you post in the internet, keep an eye on who buys any posting service that you use, especially if the buyer is Facebook (as in this case) or Google.
Better, accept that any online service that allows you to publish to the internet "for free" (meaning at no up-front cost to you) is likely to end up "monetizing" its service by selling or renting your content. If you consider that monetizing to be a back-door cost to you, avoid such "freebies". Not that for-pay services are necessarily better, but that have a better chance of it, since they have a motivation not to chase away paying customers.
Even better yet, only expose to the internet what you are happy to have shared or used by anyone in any imaginable way, because if people want to, they can and they will.
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Apparently there has been some backlash. Who would have thought?
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-instagram-leaving-uproar-20121218,0,5257839.htmlstory
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I was afraid it would be taken this way, and it was. My fault.
Least intrusive to the the users, as opposed to charging a fee that would make a lot of the user base flee.
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This just may be the nudge I need to cancel Facebook.
That may be far easier said than done Eric. Facebook is the current business vemnture of BastardsIncorporatded.
Cheers,
W
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That may be far easier said than done Eric. Facebook is the current business vemnture of BastardsIncorporatded.
Cheers,
W
In the words of The Eagles:
Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave!"
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Some more reasoned analysis at:-
http://connect.dpreview.com/post/9262192527/what-you-need-to-kn0w-instagram
If nothing else the media storm is at least highlighting an awareness of IPR.
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We all saw this coming:
http://instagram.com/p/TZaMHuoVRh/
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I haven't used Instagram, but I have a (mostly dormant) Facebook account. This just may be the nudge I need to cancel Facebook.
Go for it. I indulged in the wretched thing for about three months and it was something of a liberation to cut free.
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Has it yet been estimated how many photos are actually held by FB, Instagram, Google etc and how many photos are actually required by, what we may loosely term, the media?
Probably for every 1 image required there are 10,000 available or some such figure. We can't put the genie back in the bottle but we let the monkeys pick over the peanuts.
Having said that I was looking for some images to accompany an article I had prepared for a club (non photographic) magazine and although I spent an evening looking for appropriate pictures I found very very few that were even half way suitable, and it was only landscape type shots that I needed, nothing arty or too specific. Presently I think the average instagram/FB/Flickr user just takes pretty pictures, to their way of thinking anyway. But it's not pretty pictures that are always needed.
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This seems to be the future of Instagram-sourced advertisement (or any crowd-sourced, for that matter):
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But that's a great shot, Slobodan, don't you just adore the atomic sunrise/sunset effect?
It could be art! It probably is.
;-)
Rob C
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This seems to be the future of Instagram-sourced advertisement (or any crowd-sourced, for that matter):
It's a cold uninviting picture, a place that I would not hurry to, where is there any note of welcome or comfort? It is though, not the fault of the photographer, but the picture editor who chose it.
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surprised the BBC reported it seeing as they failed to report anything about the digital economy bill that reflected their own stance on orphan works and their use for free, not forgetting how they wanted to run the collections agency, pocket any unclaimed funds and set the 'compensation'. all this from a publicly funded organsiation who's remit is to serve the british public.
stop43.org (http://stop43.org)
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Indeed, burying right grabs in T&Cs is 'unintrusive'. It's also not very fair.
I fully appreciate that services like this have to be funded somehow, but there must be less surreptitious ways of doing it.
The Flickr model, so many free then pay a subscription could be an option. Charging a modest subscription for the app or a micro payment per upload could also work. If they really feel there's enough revenue to be gained from the user base, maybe offering a chargeable opt-out would be fairer.
How about the novel idea of sharing some of the profits with the user who created the image? Seems like a simple solution that should have been explored before the PR fiasco of claiming all rights. But I guess corporate greed got in the way.
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After Backlash, Instagram Changes Back To Original Terms Of Service. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/12/20/after-backlash-instagram-changes-back-to-original-terms-of-service/)
Cheers,
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Down the path....
Instagram furor triggers first class action lawsuit
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook's Instagram photo sharing service has been hit with what appears to be the first civil lawsuit to result from changed service terms that prompted howls of protest last week.
In a proposed class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court on Friday, a California Instagram user leveled breach of contract and other claims against the company.
"We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an e-mail.
Instagram, which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them easily on the Internet, was acquired by Facebook earlier this year for $715 million.
In announcing revised terms of service last week, Instagram spurred suspicions that it would sell user photos without compensation. It also announced a mandatory arbitration clause, forcing users to waive their rights to participate in a class action lawsuit except under very limited circumstances.
The current terms of service, in effect through mid-January, contain no such liability shield.
The backlash prompted Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom to retreat partially a few days later, deleting language about displaying photos without compensation.
However, Instagram kept language that gave it the ability to place ads in conjunction with user content, and saying "that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such." It also kept the mandatory arbitration clause.
The lawsuit, filed by San Diego-based law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk, says customers who do not agree with Instagram's terms can cancel their profile but then forfeit rights to photos they had previously shared on the service.
"In short, Instagram declares that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don't like it, you can't stop us,'" the lawsuit says.
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who had criticized Instagram, said he was pleased that the company rolled back some of the advertising terms and agreed to better explain their plans in the future.
However, he said the new terms no longer contain language which had explicitly promised that private photos would remain private. Facebook had engendered criticism in the past, Opsahl said, for changing settings so that the ability to keep some information private was no longer available.
"Hopefully, Instagram will learn from that experience and refrain from removing privacy settings," Opsahl said.
The civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Lucy Funes, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated vs. Instagram Inc., 12-cv-6482.
from: http://news.yahoo.com/instagram-furor-triggers-first-class-action-lawsuit-181048984--sector.html