Instagram back-pedals in face of user outrage
Instagram has responded to the storm of protests from its users over proposed changes to its terms and conditions by promising to alter the language it uses and guaranteeing that it won't sell user's photos. "Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos. Nothing about this …
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"it's clear that Instagram has made a major corporate mistake in announcing the changes poorly and not explaining them to panicking punters.
Ever since Mark Zuckerberg took the seemingly personal decision to shell out almost a billion dollars for the site"
Easy to see where they got their new-found arrogance from, this sounds like every FB privacy change for the last 5 years!
Am I the only one who reads the T&Cs?
I don't belong to either Facebook or Instagram, but read the T&Cs out of interest - and more reason not to join..
So far, it appears that nothing has changed.
Even reading the quotes in the article won't really change anything they want to do regarding selling your images.
Would be interesting to read the revised T&Cs when they're released, but I won't be holding my breath on anything other than more political double talk, and less actual legal changes.
Too late, Instagram
You've already abused the trust of your users.
They, like Anonymous, do not forget. Though in your case _don't_ expect them.
#FillInstagramWithShit
Without passing judgment, this is the reality of Facebook.
Even without all the similar changes that FB has made in the recent past, this episode should serve to inform all FB/Instagram users of their mindset and company practice.
This is the way they think about data that their users upload, be it a photo or a status update or a 'like' - it is information that they want to make money out of. That's not inherently a bad thing and by no means unique to Facebook but if you don't like that then it really is time to start thinking about moving away from that ecosystem.
Still, my own personal opinion is that they were testing the waters. All such policies, be they privacy, usage or even laws, tend to be worded in such a way as to provide a large scope for the company (or government if it is a law) to do a great many things that might not be within the 'spirit' of it.
On the surface of it, the post by Systrom is straight-forward and takes responsibility for the confusion, rather than simply saying it was the users who were confused as is the usual response. This, again on the surface, is commendable.
However, the simple fact is that Instagram, through Facebook, have access to the very best lawyers available, especially those dealing with exactly such policies. We must assume that these policies were not written by some intern and published without oversight - they were developed over time with input and oversight from lawyers well-versed in the language of privacy and terms of use policies.
If the language of the policies really does not mean what they wanted it to mean then that is not a good look for a company handling the data and private information of millions of people.
With such legal resources at their disposal, however, it is vanishingly unlikely that the language used says anything other than exactly what they wanted it to say. From that, Systrom's claim - that the original policies were a mistake and didn't accurately reflect their goals - must be seen as a lie.
This does rest on an assumption but I think it's a fairly likely one - that Intagram, through Facebook, has access to enough legal resources that any confusing of misleading wording would have been identified and discussed. In other words, Insatagram had full chance to correct the wording well before the policies were made available. They did not do so.
Mainstream news
I heard this story as a news item on various radio station bulletins. Not one of them mentioned Facebook in any way, despite the fact that this would make the story sound bigger. Facebook have been in the news a lot this year.
That's because (Instagram==uncool) whereas (Facebook==cool), especially when the same radio stations are plugging Facebook and Twitter pages on every show.
That's how superficial the mainstream news is.
I wouldn't trust any free social networking (or similar) site with intellectual property I care about protecting. Flickr don't claim ownership of your photos, but there are already too many people using the APIs to take photos that are marked "all rights reserved" (including the BBC).
And even the snapshots I do upload to such sites are never high resolution.
Re: Mainstream news
Absolutely.. Any photos I post that I have great hi-res copies of are posted 800px wide and 70% jpeg quality.
Yeah you might get a crappy postcard out of it but I have the one that prints beautifully at 3' x 2' and you're not getting it! :oD
Mostly I post crap from my phone though. (Literally for instagram last night with the kitty litter tray...). The grown-up (no, not like that you pervs) SLR photos are archived on the raid drives at home
Re: LBC 97.3
A presenter on LBC 97.3 radio in London has made this the subject of his phone-in this morning, and is taking the stance that there's no such thing as a free lunch.
It's interesting to hear the general view expressed by email and Twitter messages that Instagram claiming ownership of your images is unfair, and then drawing a stream of flawed analogies such as putting your furniture into a storage company, who then lend your furniture behind your back to other people to use and abuse... without considering the fact that you pay a storage company for their service, which is why you expect them to be stored securely.
But the people actually phoning in are saying that if you want to protect your IP, you should make your own website and only show low-res images, though there's nothing wrong with using Facebook and Twitter to show off unimportant photos.
It's also only people phoning in who've said they've closed their Instagram account, delete traces of their movements on Facebook on the basis that it highlights global brands and generally wear tin foil hats and have bought the David Icke 2013 calender.
On the subject of David Icke, when you consider the cost of a ticket and the fact he talks for about 11 hours, I really don't understand why his show doesn't get more praise than Les Mis, Starlight Express or Camelot. The only reason I haven't gone myself is the fear of who I'll end up sitting next to.
A cynical take
They're not stupid enough to think that there wouldn't be a massive outcry and a whole load of users would walk away from Instagram, they were counting on it.
Instagram came with a massive installed base, but the users that aren't on Facebook are dead weight, chuck out some scary legalese and they'll take their cash free business to someone else's trough.
Are users abandoning Facebook over changes to the Instagram T&C? not really, will Facebook users still post pictures with the adopted Instagram filters? yep, result, costs are down.
Facebook took the Microsoft approach when it bought Instagram in as it just bought it because it saw it as a threat rather than because it actually wanted to do anything with it. I doubt they bought it for its photo filters as instragram probably didn't have any IP around those as you could achieve the same effects for years with photo editing software Eventually it will get absorbed into facebook and everyone will forget that it was a promising alternative social network
They'll get away with it
Looking at the long list of user's blogging about their relief that Instagram are not claiming ownership of their pictures, I get the distinct impression that they're missing the point.
Instagram never claimed ownership of the photos. They were claiming the right to make commercial use outside of the site without compensation to the owners, and nothing in their recent response indicates that that will change. People really need to read the full text of the Ts&Cs before relaxing.
Re: They'll get away with it
There's a difference beween:
We own your content (and you don't)
You own your content and we licence it so we have legal permission to store it, copy it and display it on our site (but that's all)
You own your content but we licence it so we can sub-licence it for cash - which we don't share with you
You own your content but we licence it so we can sub-licence it for cash - which we do share with you
You own your content but we licence it so we can use it in our own ads (but that's all)
I'm still not sure which applies here.
Or whether it even matters; if Instagram still hasn't worked out how to monetise content, it probably never will.
@TheOtherHobbes - Re: They'll get away with it
I think the one that applies is
You own your content but we licence it so we can sub-licence it for cash - which we don't share with you
This is based on the following in the original proposed Terms under 'Rights' :
... 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
The only constraint acknowledged is on what they do within the Instagram service. Outside - anything goes.
The summary/preview part of the blog very carefully avoids raising this issue and, in my opinion, it was deceitful (although not actually false).
Re: They'll get away with it
". . . if Instagram still hasn't worked out how to monetise content, it probably never will."
Without claiming to know the internal structures that exist between Facebook and Instagram, it would seem that access to the vast funds of Facebook means that Instagram don't have to rush to monetise the content.
To the point, though, I'm pretty sure it's this:
"You own your content but we licence it so we can sub-licence it for cash - which we don't share with you"
not going to use it anymore
I've hardly ever used it to begin with and have now resolved never to use it again. They may be backpeddeling at 150 BPS, there's no guarentee that 1: they wont use your pics anyway and 2: they'll silently change the policy in time anyway.
I fully understand that social media are looking for new ways to make money and to a certain extent, i support that, but i draw the line at crap like this.
Re: not going to use it anymore
As a general comment (not directed to you, good sir), people who are ceasing to use Instagram over this should also stop using Facebook.
Facebook owns Instagram. If you have a Facebook account and stop using Instagram then FB aren't really going to care. The only way to send a message of disapproval is to close your Facebook account and, if you are the proselytising type, encourage others to do likewise.
At the very least, explain to your friends and family that you do not want them posting any pictures of you, of with you in them, to Facebook (or Instagram).
On an utterly unrelated note, why is the spell-check on a British website trying to correct me to using vile 'American English'?
I don't believe them.
I really don't. And what's to stop them from pulling crap like this again?
Sorry Instagram, you had your chance. Bye bye.
Re: I don't believe them.
MUG. That could equally apply to any site, including The Register.
Just put the tin foil hat down now.
All your users are belong to someone else
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the T&Cs.
Operator: Instaport turn on.
Zuckerberg: All your photo are belong to us.
Zuckerberg: You have no chance to survive make me profit.
Captain: Move Flickr.
Captain: For great justice.
Great big turds
Never used Instagram, but now I'm tempted to install it and photograph every pile of dog shite that I come across... I'll be happy for them to use those.
I think I uploaded one crappy picture and even though they are trying to make amends, it is too little too late. They might well back-peddle now but they will sneak these T&Cs back in again at some point. Thanks but no thanks.
Google has exactly the same:
They can sell your content if they wish to:
"When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure that you have the necessary rights to grant us this licence for any content you submit to our Services."
Re: Google has exactly the same:
Including the draft of my next "bestseller" written using google services and stored on their cloud, about the sexual shenanigans of dotcom millionaires?
If only their statement would load. I'm so looking forward to the bit where he says he would like to apologise!
Why the outrage when it's a free service? When will these idot consumers learn....
that nothing is free. I think its a huge laughable joke and the fact that many people are jumping into these services with both feet and then getting a surprise when they discover their is a price to be paid.
Bottom line. The service is free. No business/company can exist without revenue. It costs money to run the servers, buy the hardware, as well as pay the developers/employees. How many people would use the service for a nominal fee each month to store their content and not have it licensed out to third parties?
Users should have a choice, but they should also be realistic in the realities of how businesses work/survive. This kind of ignorance in how these services exist, just shows how dumb the general public truly are at times.
Best wishes,
Re: Why the outrage when it's a free service? When will these idot consumers learn....
Why did someone downvote this? It is surely true. Anybody who thinks you get something for nothing on the Internet is, to say the least, gullible.
I will happily use a free service if I can see how the supplier is making money from it and I agree with what they are doing, but Facebook and its ilk are really opaque. They need to die, and die quickly, so that people get used to paying a fair, and visible, price for services and the present nonsense stops.
For one thing, it might get rid of a lot of the crap that is presently on the Internet, and improve our bandwidth.
Re: Why the outrage when it's a free service? When will these idot consumers learn....
"They need to die, and die quickly, so that people get used to paying a fair, and visible, price for services and the present nonsense stops."
So how much will you pay to read El Reg, and when will you start paying? Or your chosen mainstream news site? More broadly, you'll happily wave goodbye to free current account banking, and pay for one of those bundled premium accounts? If you're in London, you'll want to go back to paying for the Standard? How would you like to pay for your search engine - per use or monthly subscription? When did you last pay for weather information?
There's many different ways of paying for the services we use, and the problem here isn't that people need to pay good hard cash, it is when the way they pay is opaque, the terms one sided, and particularly when changes to terms are malignant, as in this case.
Re: Why the outrage when it's a free service? When will these idot consumers learn....
I wasn't the down-voter but I can offer a few possible explanations of why.
The first is as you yourself have said: " . . . Facebook and its ilk are really opaque." In general, I believe that most people, like you, will happily use a free service if they understand how the money is being made. The problem is, as you have identified, that it's often hard to figure that out, which is of course the point.
The second, is that these companies all start out being free and open and about the users but then gradually grow to be more about profit. Yes, people realise that companies need to make money but people don't like it when the ground moves under their feet.
What happens is that people upload data to their 'social networking' service of choice under certain policies and terms of use. Sometime down the track, the policies and terms are changed, almost always toward giving more control to the provider and/or less privacy to the user. The important part is that these changes always apply to your old data as well - i.e. the data uploaded under different policies.
I realise that it would be practically impossible to segregate data based on when it was uploaded and apply different policies to each but when someone has uploaded data within a certain set of policies, they have an expectation that that data will continue to be governed by that set of policies. They may have gone through the terms word-by-word and decided it was acceptable but now that same data is governed by new, less acceptable policies.
Tin-foil hat to one side, I very much dislike when a company I like and trust with my personal information is bought-out by a company I dislike and whom I do _not_ trust with my information.
The third is that it is incongruous to say that these services exist because users are ignorant of the business practices of such providers and then talk down to people objecting to a change in those business practices. While an individual user may not understand the implications, the community as a whole very much does and that community is objecting.
The final, and perhaps simplest reason, is that people just don't like being called idiots.
It is very narrow to say that everyone complaining about this is ignorant and naive and such blanket dismissals of peoples' ideas and feelings are generally not taken well.
Re: Why the outrage when it's a free service? When will these idot consumers learn....
Let me see...
I paid for weather information when I installed the Met Office application, which I pay for with taxes. I pay for my bank account by letting them have my money to use. I buy a physical newspaper.
El Reg is a site which adds value to the provision of advertisements by IT companies. I work in IT. Some of those adverts are actually useful to me and I don't mind the Register collecting some information from me in exchange.
I can remember when the Evening Standard was a newspaper...I have no desire to read it.
I help with one social media site and so neither pay a subscription nor get ads in exchange.
About 60% of the time I use a search engine it is to find where I can obtain things. The rest of the time it's work or research which will probably result in someone, somewhere buying something. So ad-funded search engines I can accept.
I pay for my Dropbox account and my email mailboxes.
Your point was?
What are _my_ rights?
I personally don't use these services. I suppose I just don't care what people ate for lunch or how well their baby slept last night. Tinfoil hat on, I also don't want my personal information shared with the world. I've got no problem with people who do, but I don't want ME being shared with the world.
The question is, as someone who doesn't use the service, and therefore hasn't agreed to their terms, what are my rights when I find images of myself being used in the way proposed? (Or indeed at all.)
Perhaps more simply, what right do I have over my own image? (Is likeness the correct technical term?)
I suspect if I ever complained to one of these companies that images of me were being used without my permission, then they would claim (correctly for all I know) that the original uploader, and not they, are liable. I wonder if I would be able to simply ask them to cease using my likeness without requiring legal action against the uploader, who is likely to be a friend.
Anyone here know how that would play out?
Re: What are _my_ rights?
"I personally don't use these services."
No, but you're using social media by commenting here. Have you read the Reg T&C's? I haven't. No idea what rights I've given away, or what promises I've made. Rather worrying if they've got a clause in there promising that they can take all my worldly wealth.
Re: What are _my_ rights?
I confess that I haven't but I also know that such T&Cs can really only cover those things related the the service. There are plenty enough legal provisions to protect people from outlandish clauses and El Reg is limited by what it can realistically take without involving me. To use the example you have given, if there was a clause in there to charge me some fee then they would not be able to TAKE that from me without me knowing and thereafter, the legal protections do their job to, well, protect me.
I fully authorise El Reg to use the data I willingly give it for their own purposes.
Your reply really doesn't answer anything.
What data The Register has about me, I give it to them myself. I have full rights to anything I write and in submitting that to the Reg's comments section, I grant The Register rights to reproduce that content any way they see fit.
My point is that FB/Instagram may have my image which they then can use, but I did not give them that image and I did not ever authorise them to use it.
Just because I am comfortable providing my (inane) thoughts to the Register, does not mean that I am comfortable having Facebook use my image (likeness?) any way they see fit.
d.
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