[no2pencil]

It just occurred to me... parents are always saying how their kids know more about computers than they do. The next generation can do blah blah blah.

Seems these kids are not as smart as they have been built up to be. The constant complaining about free online services, FaceBook, Instagram.

Common sense to be... not so common.

[IJET]

Literally lol'd at these two statements:

"The move riled social media users, with one likening it to a "suicide note"

"One user tweeted: "Good bye #instagram. Your new terms of service are totally stupid and nonsense. Good luck playing with the big boys."

How do people honestly think these companies who charge nothing become giants worth billions? Facebook and search engines wouldn't dare touch my information! I signed up to use their product and agreed to their terms of service, but they better play by my rules!

[supersloth]

if there's no product, you are the product. simple stuff.

[farrell2k]

rgfirefly24, on 18 December 2012 - 05:07 PM, said:

This is nothing new, businesses have been selling your information for years. Facebook/Instragram is just the latest and most public about it.

Right, but it is illegal to use someone's image or likeness for commercial purposes without a model release.

[jon.kiparsky]

farrell2k, on 18 December 2012 - 02:29 PM, said:

rgfirefly24, on 18 December 2012 - 05:07 PM, said:

This is nothing new, businesses have been selling your information for years. Facebook/Instragram is just the latest and most public about it.

Right, but it is illegal to use someone's image or likeness for commercial purposes without a model release.

I think it might be a little more complicated than that, but yes, most advertisers pay for releases whenever they can, to avoid headaches.
In this case, though, I don't think you'd be likely to be in a position to pursue any remedy on this basis. Think of the likely use cases.
One thing the advertiser desperately fears is their iconic personality suddenly going off-brand - the wholesome housewife who chirps about laxatives or dish soap turns out to be a junkie, not good for sales. So they get a model and tie her up in contracts and riders and give her a salary to make sure she doesn't start doing porn scenes on the side, or anything of that sort.

Now imagine if Bob's FizzyBooze (in sixteen fruity flavors!) picked up a picture of sloth and started using it in all of their ads. Suddenly, sloth is their brand's persona, and the next morning he's at their door offering to not embarrass their brand, for a small consideration, and they're over a barrel.
They don't want to create that situation, so what you're going to see is a lot of randomly selected images, with their branding mixed in. The idea is to normalize the use of Kurt's Kontraceptives or Quincy's Quality Quease-easer by stirring their logo into the flickering shiny that their targets are staring at all day. So while your photo might show up, it's going to be a momentary flicker in an endless stream. Not really a great basis for legal action.

In fact, now that I think of it, the best strategy might be to only show you images from your own close network, plus their branding images. That way your friends become unpaid sponsors. Now they're using your image without a release, but the only people seeing it are people who would be seeing it anyway. Good luck collecting on that one!

This post has been edited by jon.kiparsky: 18 December 2012 - 12:58 PM

[rgfirefly24]

It is even more then that really, In the Terms that you agreed to by not closing your Facebook you give them the following:

Quote

For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

This basically means that you give Facebook the ability to do what they want with your photos/videos/comments/ect. The only thing they can't do is sell the IP with a royalty. They get a one time monetary fee which you agreed you have no entitlement to.

[farrell2k]

jon.kiparsky, on 18 December 2012 - 07:46 PM, said:

farrell2k, on 18 December 2012 - 02:29 PM, said:

rgfirefly24, on 18 December 2012 - 05:07 PM, said:

This is nothing new, businesses have been selling your information for years. Facebook/Instragram is just the latest and most public about it.

Right, but it is illegal to use someone's image or likeness for commercial purposes without a model release.

I think it might be a little more complicated than that, but yes, most advertisers pay for releases whenever they can, to avoid headaches.
In this case, though, I don't think you'd be likely to be in a position to pursue any remedy on this basis. Think of the likely use cases.
One thing the advertiser desperately fears is their iconic personality suddenly going off-brand - the wholesome housewife who chirps about laxatives or dish soap turns out to be a junkie, not good for sales. So they get a model and tie her up in contracts and riders and give her a salary to make sure she doesn't start doing porn scenes on the side, or anything of that sort.

Now imagine if Bob's FizzyBooze (in sixteen fruity flavors!) picked up a picture of sloth and started using it in all of their ads. Suddenly, sloth is their brand's persona, and the next morning he's at their door offering to not embarrass their brand, for a small consideration, and they're over a barrel.
They don't want to create that situation, so what you're going to see is a lot of randomly selected images, with their branding mixed in. The idea is to normalize the use of Kurt's Kontraceptives or Quincy's Quality Quease-easer by stirring their logo into the flickering shiny that their targets are staring at all day. So while your photo might show up, it's going to be a momentary flicker in an endless stream. Not really a great basis for legal action.

In fact, now that I think of it, the best strategy might be to only show you images from your own close network, plus their branding images. That way your friends become unpaid sponsors. Now they're using your image without a release, but the only people seeing it are people who would be seeing it anyway. Good luck collecting on that one!

Reminds me of the "Dude, you're getting a Dell" kid and his fallout out with Dell. In any event, I bet they'll probably stay away from images with clearly identifiable people, and opt to use others, instead.

[magius96]

I think that unless the images are being physically reviewed by a human, this opens the company to the possibility of some rather serious lawsuits.

As another user pointed out, it's currently illegal to use an image of a person in advertising without that persons permission. Some of you argue that by uploading the images we are giving permission. I beg to differ. There are only about 5 photos of me that I actually uploaded that are online. All the rest of the photos were uploaded by other people with or without my consent. Those people who uploaded the images don't have the legal right to make agreements that infringe upon my own legal rights in regards to how images of me can be used. Thus, if I were to see that a photo of me, that was uploaded by some other user, is being used in an advertisement campaign, I can sue the company that is using it because I would NOT be bound by their terms of service on those photos since I did not upload them myself.

There's also the case of copyrights. For instance, there are a few images that I uploaded on my Facebook account that I did not create. I was given permission by the copyright owner to post them online for viewing on my profile only. As long as those images are only visible on my Facebook profile then no one is infringing upon the copyright. The moment a company decides to use that image in their advertising campaign they are then infringing upon the copyright that is held by the original owner, who once again is NOT bound by the terms of service that Facebook presents to its users.

What I present here are just two of the hundreds of pitfalls the company can face if they go forwards with their plan. I'm not an attorney, nor do I claim to be any sort of expert in the field, but I am trying to point out that there is a lot more involved in the laws than many of us might think.

No, there may not be an uprising of users fighting to stop this company from taking these actions, but I can assure you that once this company moves forward with their plans, the lawsuits will begin. If I'm right, and there are as many pitfalls in the law as I think there are, the company will retract its decision. It will most likely take a few years, bit I think it will happen when the lawsuits start to make a major impact to their bottom line.

[h4nnib4l]

Right, because Facebook can't afford lawyers to figure this shit out.

[modi123_1]

Yeah.. facebook's been there and paid that.

Quote

Facebook recently settled a class-action lawsuit stemming from Facebook’s alleged unauthorized use of users’ photographs in ‘sponsored stories’ advertisements on its site. The class action plaintiffs alleged that Facebook’s use of their images in “Sponsored Stories” advertisements violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the California right of publicity statute, which reserves to the individual the right to control their image for commercial purposes. Under the terms of the settlement, Facebook agreed to pay a total of $20 million, with half of the settlement funds donated to charities and law schools, and the other half going to plaintiffs’ attorneys. Other than the three class representatives, no Facebook users will receive any funds from the settlement.

Facebook users had been serving as unwitting brand promoters on the site, appearing without their permission or knowledge in promotional ‘stories’ featuring advertised products and services. Merely ‘liking’ a company or brand functioned as an effective opt-in that allowed Facebook to use the user’s image in that company or brand’s advertising on the site. The only means of withdrawing from promotional use of one’s image was to ‘unlike’ the brand, which, prior to this settlement, was not an easy feat.

Under the terms of the settlement, Facebook agreed to facilitate the procedure for ‘unliking’ brands and thereby opting out of promotion, but it has not decoupled ‘liking’ a brand from use of one’s image in actively promoting that brand on the site

http://www.jdsupra.c...publicit-98539/

[jon.kiparsky]

magius96, on 18 December 2012 - 03:44 PM, said:

I'm not an attorney

Get out! Really?

[magius96]

Yeah...thought I'd have to make that clear.

[j4v3d]

Instagram have come out and said on their website in a blog post that they will not be selling our pictures.

Have a read here Instagram Update

[jon.kiparsky]

Quote

Ownership Rights Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos. Nothing about this has changed. We respect that there are creative artists and hobbyists alike that pour their heart into creating beautiful photos, and we respect that your photos are your photos. Period.

I always want you to feel comfortable sharing your photos on Instagram and we will always work hard to foster and respect our community and go out of our way to support its rights.

Privacy Settings Nothing has changed about the control you have over who can see your photos. If you set your photos to private, Instagram only shares your photos with the people you’ve approved to follow you. We hope that this simple control makes it easy for everyone to decide what level of privacy makes sense.

So unless you've made them private, sharing your photos even more is just fine. Under a Coke logo, maybe.

[Sergio Tapia]

BreaksOnDust, on 18 December 2012 - 01:06 PM, said:

Sometimes, (alot of times lately) I really wish I could stop using facebook. Completely. But I'm still bound to use it or I'll miss out on all fun events and such. Really wish their was some kind of alternative to facebook. An alternative that cared about the privacy of their users instead of trying to exploit it. Also wish I could quit using gmail.

Has anybody heard of suicide machine 2.0? Earlier you could use it to "completely" remove your facebook profile. I think facebook threatened them with a lawsuit.

Why do you want to quit using Facebook? Please, let me know.

Why do you want an alternative to Facebook? Does it not do it's job well?

Honestly curious, it seems most people who "hate" the site are just drinking the proverbial kool-aid and offer no real reasons.