It's Me, In an Ad, On Facebook. Is This Legal? Allowed? Who Knows?

[thinkcomp]

This is pretty clear copyright infringement. Whoever took the picture owns the copyright.

Being a public figure would matter if this were a first amendment free speech issue, but it's not. It's just a plain violation of the Lanham Act, both due to the copyright infringement (17 U.S.C. §§ 101 et seq) and because of the false advertising claim (15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)(1)(B)) you could make because of the impression that the person endorses the ad (but I'm not a lawyer, for the record). So no, it's not legal, and illegal acts should not be allowed by any company's terms of service.

It's also ironic given how Facebook got its start (i.e. Facemash), which was by misusing photos copyrighted by Harvard.

[w1ntermute]

But doesn't Facebook claim ownership of the copyright if you upload a photo to its site?

[johnbattelle]

Guys, I think, no matter how "nice" AppSumo is in deflecting this stuff, the fact is, they've done it before, and they keep doing it. It's shady, and it's rather lame.

[WordSkill]

This doesn't surprise me in the least, Appsumo is a pretty scummy operation, regardless of how much PR effort they put into cultivating the HN audience.

[techiferous]

What have they done that is scummy?

[jdp23]

Disappointing to see AppSumo using people's photos without permission.

[orijing]

Per Facebook's advertising guidelines [1]:

Copyrights and trademarks Ads cannot include any content that infringes upon the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or other personal or proprietary right. The advertiser must have intellectual property rights to the creative and be permitted to display such creative as advertising on the Facebook Site.

So yes, it is clearly not allowed, assuming that the copyright holder has not given the advertiser the permission to use his picture.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php

[Dramatize]

I'd be interested in Noah's response.

[wacheena]

Noah's pretty active on HN (at least reading), so I expect he'll chime in soon.

[plasma]

I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think you can make money off someone's "likeness" (eg, a photo!) without their content?

Especially a portrait shot.

[stevenp]

This is not the first time that AppSumo has run an ad with a person's likeness. When a public figure has a fan page, I think it's safe to say that it's fair game (per Facebook's TOS) for Facebook advertisers to target fans of that person. I get targeted ads for authors and bands all the time that use a similar tactic. It's actually not that different from someone buying a Google ad using your name. I think what was jarring to Battelle was that he thought that AppSumo was targeting his friends, and not his "fans".

[forgotAgain]

I think what was jarring was that AppSumo was trying to make people believe that Battelle was associated with and/or endorsed their product.

[Confusion]

It's a disruptive, unorthodox, mischievous public relations hack. Also a legal and moral hack. Or at least, that's probably how they feel about it. This is the dark side of thinking outside of the established box: sometimes it's not that others don't see the outside of the box: it's that, on average, we don't want anyone to go outside the box in that way.

Remember: getting away with murder is hacking the justice system.

[paisible]

Not really surprised, I just went to unsusbcribe from their newsletter this morning, was getting increasingly tired of their over the top sales shpeel.

[fascinated]

Is declaring "Facebook bankruptcy" cool? I thought JB knew about this stuff?

[johnbattelle]

Well...I do "know" about it. It's just that I have not found the time to fix it. I hope to.

[siculars]

I'm sure we'll hear from Noah soon enough...