For those of you who don't think this is a big deal. Instagram is explicitly stating that they're going to sell the use of your pictures to third parties. They're also going to start showing ads in their news stream. I know the pictures are of too low quality to be plastered on a billboard. That's not the point. What I expect they want to happen is something like this:
I post a picture of me drinking a Coke to Instagram. I expect to share this with my friends, and maybe the people who follow me on Twitter. I know it's publicly available, but the chances of anyone beyond my circle of friends seeing it are slim to none. But now, Instagram notices that I posted this picture and sells it to Coke. Now, when Coke starts buying ads on Instagram, my photo shows on total stranger's news streams saying something like "Hey Enjoy a Coke, like this guy here!"
So, what's wrong with that? Well, for one thing, I never agreed to be in an ad campaign for Coke. Maybe I don't even like Coke. Maybe MY caption was something like "Ugh, out of Pepsi".
For another thing, generally, when you appear in an advertisement for a product, you get paid. Your likeness in the context of a commercial ad campaign has value, and when a company says "Yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and take that and not pay you anything" the appropriate response is "hell no".
There are tons of stock photography models who live with this risk for a bit of compensation. So they make (say) $100 to be in a photo and have a 0.01% chance of being in an ad they find objectionable.
I get a free/fun app instead of $100. Instead of a .01% chance, I have a .00000001% of appearing in an objectionable ad (my photos just aren't as good as pros, and I'm just not that pretty). Add to that-- if this happens, I certainly won't be the first one it happens to and will almost certainly have an opportunity to delete my account when I start hearing about this happening in the wild. Even if I don't delete it, the chance of my crappy photos getting found/used out of the MANY BILLIONS on instagram also seems laughably small.
Statistically, this could bite me-- but I have to figure that the chance is so close to 0% that the (small) reward of using Instagram is worth the (trivial) risk. I also tend to dismiss concerns around lightning, sharks, and hijackers.
> For another thing, generally, when you appear in an advertisement for a product, you get paid. Your likeness in the context of a commercial ad campaign has value
I don't think this is going to be a popular opinion, but keep in mind that Instagram has untold engineers and UI people, all of whom are fairly expensive, and this advertising clause is really in lieu of a licensing fee, not something consumers provide "for free".
I'm not really in favor of the business model, but in a world where apps are licensed at 99c I think models like this are to be expected. To fix this problem, we would have to return to a system where the costs to develop software are paid by the people who use it.
It'd be even more effective (read: messed up) if they take your coke-drinking-photo and show this in your own friends' feeds as an advertisement, with the kind of caption you mentioned.
I experienced the effectiveness of seeing a friend's face on an ad first hand a few years ago, when a friend of mine put up a job-posting ad on facebook with his face on it. My engagement with that ad was ridiculously high and it lead me to go proactively research what his company was about.
"Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos."
I think it boils down to economics: Why give away your chance to become a poster child and the money that goes with it? Taking your photos elsewhere will kill that chance, and the accompanying unfairness.
I wonder why instagram didn't opt for the revenue sharing model with its users.
"I know the pictures are of too low quality to be plastered on a billboard."
Don't be too sure about that. Billboard pictures are very lowres (sometimes even 10ppi) because most of the time they are viewed from a large distance.
You have no imagination, a better idea would be to sell the photos and all the data Facebook and Instagram have on you to Coke so in a couple of years when you're pumping gas a little camera recognizes your face and the gas pump says "Hi Imgabe! You like Coke! You can't fool us! Press yes to buy a Coke! Your mom's birthday is next Tuesday but since she's a diabetic would you like to buy her a Diet Coke? STOP TRYING TO HIDE YOUR FACE AND PRESS YES TO BUY YOUR DIABETIC MOM A DIET COKE IMGABE.
Can somebody explain to me what the big deal is about Instagram and these new terms of service? I can't fathom that anything but 1% of 1% of photos taken there are good enough to be used commercially, and if folks are so afraid that their pictures of Starbucks lattes will be used in some kind of marketing campaign (in which case they should actually be flattered), what exactly is stopping users from removing location information from the pictures they want to keep private?
For me, if the local coffee shop here wants to dig up some pictures I took of their business to help them get more customers, why not let them? I'm not Richard Avedon, and I never, ever, expected to profit from my Instagram photography. I'm more than happy to support small businesses and Instagram. Have a ball, guys. It's all public anyway.
The big deal is that someone is profiting from my work without my consent and it isn't me.
It's that we (the people) get slammed by DMCA violations for taking someone else's content (for private consumption). When a huge corporation takes ours (and gets paid for it), what recourse do we have?
It's that these corporations can change the rules on us in the middle of the game. It's the classic bait and switch.
It's that we're not even getting asked or given credit.
The Instagram developer page (http://instagram.com/developer) says users own their images. They expect third party developers to respect that. Why won't they?
The main issue is that basically it removes the concept of private photos. The new TOS allows Instagram to use your photos any way they want and removes any responsibility of keeping private pictures private.
Those pictures of you doing a keg stand at a Toga party which you shared only with your closest friends? Well now they are in a nationwide PSA about binge drinking.
Those pictures of you with your ex girlfriend on a beach vacation? Those are now in Carnival ad about whisking your loved ones on a cruise. Your wife is pissed and even deleting the photo off Instagram doesn't do anything about it.
If you are ok with all your photos becoming public, then sure this isn't a big deal. I think many people aren't.
Flickr and Google (among others) don't claim the kind of license that Instagram demands in the new ToS. So this is only a big deal in that there are some alternatives that don't suck and are really easy to switch to.
If they want to put content users in touch with content providers, they can do what Flickr did: make a way for them to do so. There are a ton of ways to monetize that, too, without dialing it up all the way to "we own your content". I bet most users would love a request system that lets businesses use their photos free of charge with attribution if they click "yes".
Can somebody explain to me what the big deal is about Instagram and these new terms of service? I can't fathom that anything but 1% of 1% of photos taken there are good enough to be used commercially [...]
Let's look at your claim that around "1% of 1%", or one in ten thousand, of Instagram photos are of commercial quality. With 5 million+ photos uploaded per day [1], that's 500 photos a day.
It seems to me that the new ToS made some people want to leave the service, because that's not what they signed up for. You obviously made another choice.
Human-produced carbon output is only like 1% of 1% of the atmosphere. No big deal right? Murderers are only like 1% of 1% of people. No big deal right?
I agree. Instagram is simply going to use interesting photos of places and items to help market those places.
Someone you follow tagged a photo of a latte at a new coffee shop in town? Well, now that photo might show up as a sponsored post in the same way Facebook likes generate sponsored posts.
I generally like seeing the photos of the people I am subscribed to, so seeing them attached to a location or product ad doesn't bother me in the slightest.
I think the interesting question here is "how many folks will simply ignore all of this and keep on using Instagram?" -- if privacy scandals were going to hurt user bases, Facebook would long since be gone. I suspect that any loss of users Instagram has suffered are more likely to have been through the dumbing-down of their iOS app than privacy concerns.
I will continue to use Instagram, as I don't feel particularly concerned with my photos on there. I'd even feel honored if they were a bit smarter about their approach and planned on asking for permission to use specific photos first. Shit, that would probably have kept this from being a PR disaster and instead become a bonus for some users, as I think it would be really cool to see my photos featured in different mediums.
Does deleting your account actually remove your photos? I've seen some people claim that you can still load the images if you know the URL. Not sure if it's just a CDN that hasn't expired the content yet or if Instagram really keeps your photos after you "delete" them.
My god, people, calm down. This isn't instagram trying to use your photos as stock photos.
First: they're not good enough. They're snapshots taken with camera phones, they're not marketing materials.
Second: that would piss off their users, and no sane company would ever do this. The thing you're seeing in their ToS is an interpretation that allows for this.
Expect a statement from instagram confirming that they will change their ToS to explicitly disallow this sometime today.
In the meantime: calm down, go outside for a walk.
>The thing you're seeing in their ToS is an interpretation that allows for this.
Then maybe companies shouldn't amend their ToS to "allow" for things that are so utterly odious. None of the other companies that matter do this, so the claim that this is standard boilerplate is bunkola.
I came here to post almost exactly this. This happens regularly with the big sites - some idiot lawyer writes an overly cautious ToS change, everyone gets up in arms about it, the site writes an apology clarifying (and probably fires the lawyer).
It seems common sense to me if you just think it to the end: do you REALLY think taking a photo of me drinking Coke (against my will) would be good advertising? Or selling my photo as a stock photo without compensating me - that that would fly? Really? It seems absolutely obvious to me that Instagram has no interest whatsoever in doing what people are all afraid they'll be doing.
Wait. Lot's of people were telling me that lack of Instagram app prevented them from switching to Windows Phone. Turns out lack of that app was just trend setting? :-)
Sortof. They have similar clauses, but the YouTube TOS (similar to other services like Dropbox, Flicker, etc.) gives them a "worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free ... transferable license" to provide the service. Legally, you need a "license" for somebody's content in order to access it and generate a thumbnail.
This change in Instagram's TOS is different:
Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising
revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored
content or promotions, you agree that a business or other
entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos
(along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take,
in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions,
without any compensation to you
Note, this is essentially what Facebook does when you "like" a company's page.
To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.
In other words, they're trying to monetize Instagram a similar way Facebook is - Sponsored Posts - your photos and associated data can be promoted by companies without having to notify you about it.
Furthermore under Section 106: Exclusive rights in copyrighted works aka. 17 U.S.C. § 106[2] Instagram cannot sell your photos and it cannot use your photos and alter them in any meaningful way.
Having said that Instagram could have communicated this better as this hasn't helped the situation either.
Wouldn't the simplest fix be to let users opt-in to this?
Hell, opt me in automatically by default. But maybe this is the compromise, that way Instagram can make money (as they should) and users don't feel ripped off.
As far as I can tell, some Android devices also save your photos (with filters) in a separate album, so you may not need to download them from Instagram directly.
They should. I recently switched from a Droid X running Gingerbread to a newer Android phone, and it was super easy to grab all of my instagram photos (and everything else, really) out of the files directory.
Here they have explained how Y! can't use your photos for anything else except for the purpose the content was made available. Additionally, users have the option to make content licensable if they want to using Getty.
Sometimes when these discussions appear, people talk of alternatives like "personal clouds" or "peer to peer photo sharing and blogging".
I know of at least Diaspora but there is at least one other i can't remember the name of, that you can install on your own server but i doubt that these projects in their current form will ever take off and be of any competition to the Facebook/Instagram models, because the technical aspect is just too complicated to the average user (assuming it to be a kind of user that has no existing or minimal skills to install Wordpress on a shared hosting).
Was just wondering about this on my way here to the "office" and a solution for this mess regarding user content ownership, privacy and companies "slipping the rug" under the user's feet could be the separation of service provider, the software itself and hosting (where the content is) ?
Basically something along the lines of:
* the user signing up for the hosting part on his prefered provider (Amazon Cloud, Rackspace, Linode, Google appengine, etc)
* the user signing up for his favourite social software provider, let's say as example, software companies that provided on-demand installed software distributions that provided services similar to Facebook, Instagram, Posterous, etc ... including personal e-mail services. Could be addons on a base system or a full distribution per se, rolled on subdomains (photos.bilbobaggins.com, blog.bilbobaggins.com, ... )
* the software provider would be given access (through OAuth or whatever credential system) to roll their software on the hosting provided by the user)
* discoverability (ask aggregated public timelines and the sorts) could work based on a system akin to DNS for humans/peer to peer.
* a form of standard for interoperability between service/software providers would have to bee in place for the users to be able to switch between them and allow competition.
This would mean that:
* users would retain ownership of their content since they control the hosting, meaning they could pull the plug on a service provider or switch to the competition.
* since much of this can be abstracted from the user as automated devops keep getting better, the technical barrier would be lower.
* most of the hosting and networking costs would be shared between the users, so the software providers could focus more on business models relating to a better service/software, much like app stores work these days i guess?
It depends on how instagram implements this policy, they need a policy that gives them enough flexibility to try new things and find out what will stick. It's too early to start a kill your instagram campaign. Why not wait and see how they implement this.
[+] [-] imgabe|13 years ago|reply
I post a picture of me drinking a Coke to Instagram. I expect to share this with my friends, and maybe the people who follow me on Twitter. I know it's publicly available, but the chances of anyone beyond my circle of friends seeing it are slim to none. But now, Instagram notices that I posted this picture and sells it to Coke. Now, when Coke starts buying ads on Instagram, my photo shows on total stranger's news streams saying something like "Hey Enjoy a Coke, like this guy here!"
So, what's wrong with that? Well, for one thing, I never agreed to be in an ad campaign for Coke. Maybe I don't even like Coke. Maybe MY caption was something like "Ugh, out of Pepsi".
For another thing, generally, when you appear in an advertisement for a product, you get paid. Your likeness in the context of a commercial ad campaign has value, and when a company says "Yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and take that and not pay you anything" the appropriate response is "hell no".
[+] [-] webwright|13 years ago|reply
I get a free/fun app instead of $100. Instead of a .01% chance, I have a .00000001% of appearing in an objectionable ad (my photos just aren't as good as pros, and I'm just not that pretty). Add to that-- if this happens, I certainly won't be the first one it happens to and will almost certainly have an opportunity to delete my account when I start hearing about this happening in the wild. Even if I don't delete it, the chance of my crappy photos getting found/used out of the MANY BILLIONS on instagram also seems laughably small.
Statistically, this could bite me-- but I have to figure that the chance is so close to 0% that the (small) reward of using Instagram is worth the (trivial) risk. I also tend to dismiss concerns around lightning, sharks, and hijackers.
[+] [-] drewcrawford|13 years ago|reply
I don't think this is going to be a popular opinion, but keep in mind that Instagram has untold engineers and UI people, all of whom are fairly expensive, and this advertising clause is really in lieu of a licensing fee, not something consumers provide "for free".
I'm not really in favor of the business model, but in a world where apps are licensed at 99c I think models like this are to be expected. To fix this problem, we would have to return to a system where the costs to develop software are paid by the people who use it.
[+] [-] hkmurakami|13 years ago|reply
I experienced the effectiveness of seeing a friend's face on an ad first hand a few years ago, when a friend of mine put up a job-posting ad on facebook with his face on it. My engagement with that ad was ridiculously high and it lead me to go proactively research what his company was about.
[+] [-] fusiongyro|13 years ago|reply
-- http://blog.instagram.com/post/38252135408/thank-you-and-wer...
[+] [-] return0|13 years ago|reply
I wonder why instagram didn't opt for the revenue sharing model with its users.
[+] [-] ohwp|13 years ago|reply
Don't be too sure about that. Billboard pictures are very lowres (sometimes even 10ppi) because most of the time they are viewed from a large distance.
[+] [-] courtneypowell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theklub|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edwardunknown|13 years ago|reply
It's coming.
[+] [-] siglesias|13 years ago|reply
For me, if the local coffee shop here wants to dig up some pictures I took of their business to help them get more customers, why not let them? I'm not Richard Avedon, and I never, ever, expected to profit from my Instagram photography. I'm more than happy to support small businesses and Instagram. Have a ball, guys. It's all public anyway.
[+] [-] dfxm12|13 years ago|reply
It's that we (the people) get slammed by DMCA violations for taking someone else's content (for private consumption). When a huge corporation takes ours (and gets paid for it), what recourse do we have?
It's that these corporations can change the rules on us in the middle of the game. It's the classic bait and switch.
It's that we're not even getting asked or given credit.
The Instagram developer page (http://instagram.com/developer) says users own their images. They expect third party developers to respect that. Why won't they?
Who fights for the user?
[+] [-] slykat|13 years ago|reply
Those pictures of you doing a keg stand at a Toga party which you shared only with your closest friends? Well now they are in a nationwide PSA about binge drinking.
Those pictures of you with your ex girlfriend on a beach vacation? Those are now in Carnival ad about whisking your loved ones on a cruise. Your wife is pissed and even deleting the photo off Instagram doesn't do anything about it.
If you are ok with all your photos becoming public, then sure this isn't a big deal. I think many people aren't.
[+] [-] ak217|13 years ago|reply
If they want to put content users in touch with content providers, they can do what Flickr did: make a way for them to do so. There are a ton of ways to monetize that, too, without dialing it up all the way to "we own your content". I bet most users would love a request system that lets businesses use their photos free of charge with attribution if they click "yes".
[+] [-] yesbabyyes|13 years ago|reply
Let's look at your claim that around "1% of 1%", or one in ten thousand, of Instagram photos are of commercial quality. With 5 million+ photos uploaded per day [1], that's 500 photos a day.
It seems to me that the new ToS made some people want to leave the service, because that's not what they signed up for. You obviously made another choice.
[1] http://allthingsd.com/20120403/instagram-by-the-numbers-1-bi...
[+] [-] cryptoz|13 years ago|reply
...
[+] [-] 001sky|13 years ago|reply
Sound good?
[+] [-] stevesearer|13 years ago|reply
Someone you follow tagged a photo of a latte at a new coffee shop in town? Well, now that photo might show up as a sponsored post in the same way Facebook likes generate sponsored posts.
I generally like seeing the photos of the people I am subscribed to, so seeing them attached to a location or product ad doesn't bother me in the slightest.
[+] [-] lotso|13 years ago|reply
http://www.pixlee.com/warriors/albums/527?embed=true
I probably wouldn't care if my photos showed up in a public manner, but I could understand why some people might.
[+] [-] baar|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] podperson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharkweek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mikeleeorg|13 years ago|reply
Use this to download your Instagram photos http://instaport.me
Then use this to delete your account http://help.instagram.com/customer/portal/articles/95760
[+] [-] sp332|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blhack|13 years ago|reply
First: they're not good enough. They're snapshots taken with camera phones, they're not marketing materials.
Second: that would piss off their users, and no sane company would ever do this. The thing you're seeing in their ToS is an interpretation that allows for this.
Expect a statement from instagram confirming that they will change their ToS to explicitly disallow this sometime today.
In the meantime: calm down, go outside for a walk.
[+] [-] Karunamon|13 years ago|reply
Then maybe companies shouldn't amend their ToS to "allow" for things that are so utterly odious. None of the other companies that matter do this, so the claim that this is standard boilerplate is bunkola.
[+] [-] epaga|13 years ago|reply
It seems common sense to me if you just think it to the end: do you REALLY think taking a photo of me drinking Coke (against my will) would be good advertising? Or selling my photo as a stock photo without compensating me - that that would fly? Really? It seems absolutely obvious to me that Instagram has no interest whatsoever in doing what people are all afraid they'll be doing.
[+] [-] benlower|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstrate|13 years ago|reply
Full disclosure and shameless plug, I work for one. pi.pe
[+] [-] rwhitman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grinich|13 years ago|reply
This change in Instagram's TOS is different:
Note, this is essentially what Facebook does when you "like" a company's page.[+] [-] hnriot|13 years ago|reply
that, however, also makes the whole issue moot since the images are so small to be of little/no use in any commercial sense.
flickr's iOS app, by comparison, stores on their server the full resolution image.
#nofilter FTW
[+] [-] mseebach|13 years ago|reply
The most likely scenario for Instagram photos being used in advertising would be online, not in print. So the size is fine.
[+] [-] grecy|13 years ago|reply
How do we know that for sure?
They could easily have the full res versions stored elsewhere. They own them, after all.
[+] [-] petitmiam|13 years ago|reply
612x612 images as ads on instagram would make a whole lot of commercial sense.
[+] [-] jenius|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] itsprofitbaron|13 years ago|reply
Furthermore under Section 106: Exclusive rights in copyrighted works aka. 17 U.S.C. § 106[2] Instagram cannot sell your photos and it cannot use your photos and alter them in any meaningful way.
Having said that Instagram could have communicated this better as this hasn't helped the situation either.
[1] http://instagram.com/about/legal/terms/updated/
[2] http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html
====
NOTE: Also posted this at: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939650
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kloncks|13 years ago|reply
Hell, opt me in automatically by default. But maybe this is the compromise, that way Instagram can make money (as they should) and users don't feel ripped off.
[+] [-] juddlyon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] betelnut|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mediacrisis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duggan|13 years ago|reply
Source: https://github.com/duggan/instazip
"Demo" (aka, you can use this unless traffic kills it): http://instazip.orchestra.io/
Caveats: bit buggy, running on a free Orchestra plan, wants a very recent browser to run.
PRs obviously welcome/sought.
[+] [-] product50|13 years ago|reply
Here they have explained how Y! can't use your photos for anything else except for the purpose the content was made available. Additionally, users have the option to make content licensable if they want to using Getty.
[+] [-] zemanel|13 years ago|reply
I know of at least Diaspora but there is at least one other i can't remember the name of, that you can install on your own server but i doubt that these projects in their current form will ever take off and be of any competition to the Facebook/Instagram models, because the technical aspect is just too complicated to the average user (assuming it to be a kind of user that has no existing or minimal skills to install Wordpress on a shared hosting).
Was just wondering about this on my way here to the "office" and a solution for this mess regarding user content ownership, privacy and companies "slipping the rug" under the user's feet could be the separation of service provider, the software itself and hosting (where the content is) ?
Basically something along the lines of:
* the user signing up for the hosting part on his prefered provider (Amazon Cloud, Rackspace, Linode, Google appengine, etc)
* the user signing up for his favourite social software provider, let's say as example, software companies that provided on-demand installed software distributions that provided services similar to Facebook, Instagram, Posterous, etc ... including personal e-mail services. Could be addons on a base system or a full distribution per se, rolled on subdomains (photos.bilbobaggins.com, blog.bilbobaggins.com, ... )
* the software provider would be given access (through OAuth or whatever credential system) to roll their software on the hosting provided by the user)
* discoverability (ask aggregated public timelines and the sorts) could work based on a system akin to DNS for humans/peer to peer.
* a form of standard for interoperability between service/software providers would have to bee in place for the users to be able to switch between them and allow competition.
This would mean that:
* users would retain ownership of their content since they control the hosting, meaning they could pull the plug on a service provider or switch to the competition.
* since much of this can be abstracted from the user as automated devops keep getting better, the technical barrier would be lower.
* most of the hosting and networking costs would be shared between the users, so the software providers could focus more on business models relating to a better service/software, much like app stores work these days i guess?
[+] [-] crististm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] micaeked|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clark-kent|13 years ago|reply