Another Facebook Issue

[Ed Richards]

Found this discussion on the Photoattorney Blog. There has already been a discussion about Facebook claiming the license to use your images for commerical purposes. The added wrinkles appear to be that Facebook also assumes that you have the permissions (model releases) for such use, and that you indemnify Facebook if they use your images and get sued.

Imagine this scenario: You photograph a church choir in a grand church with wonderful lighting. Good negative so you can recognize the choir members. You post this on your church site on Facebook, and sell the image in your fine art portfolio. No problems. Facebook now sells the image to an advertising company, who uses it to sell Church Brew, the Beer that Fulfills. This clearly requires model releases, which you do not have, and if there is a lawsuit, you get to pay for it, including any settlement.

[Charles Carstensen]

What a country!

[aphexafx]

So...don't post your commercial work on Facebook. That's not really what it's for, anyway. A better solution is to use Flickr! for your commercial work, if you must, and link it to your Facebook account. Flickr! photographs are fully copyrighted and protected and it presents a better viewing environment anyway.

Even better, just post a link to your personal website on your Facebook page.

Save your sh***y snapshots of your dog eating off the floor for Facebook so all your friends can tell you how cute it is. That's what it's for.

Also, doesn't Facebook enforce very limited resolutions? I seriously doubt any advertiser is going to run ads from Facebook sourced images.

[BarryS]

Ed-- As much as I subscribe to the idea of corporate evil--that scenario seems unlikely. Are there *any* documented instances of facebook selling images for commercial use? If facebook opened up users to significant and *demonstrated* liabilities, it would drive off its user base. It seems much more likely that facebooks' lawyers are trying to cover their butts for the general use and display of user content on facebook.

[Ed Richards]

Barry,

While I agree at this point in time, whatever rights Facebook claims can also pass on to their successor organization. Given that I have no idea who their successor will be, it is an interesting problem. Maybe a Facebook Troll business will start, analogous to the patent troll business - you could probably make a pretty good living selling rights back to facebook users to prevent you from selling their photos to vendors who might cause them trouble.:-)

[PViapiano]

The Facebook thing is supposedly much ado about nothing. FaceBook needs limited rights in order to present your photos to other users (your friends) on other than their original posted page...being a networked friends site.

[Ash]

This is old news, their updated terms and conditions were revoked and returned to the old ones while they tried to come to a suitable arrangement with the community that uses the site. If you trawl past the hype and fear-mongering and check out Facebook's official word on it on their blog, then you'll find the reasonable responses to all this.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Ed-- As much as I subscribe to the idea of corporate evil--that scenario seems unlikely. Are there *any* documented instances of facebook selling images for commercial use?

I haven't noticed this on Facebook, but with mergers and companies like Facebook being bought out all the time, I could imagine such scenarios arising. For instance, I've mentioned that Yahoo!Travel grabs travel photos for promotional use from flickr. When I first looked, they generally seemed to have a CC license, but checking back occasionally, I noticed that some of them didn't. I don't know if they are asking permission, but they do link back to the original photographer's page. Most of them seem to be ordinary, non-professional travel photos, because I think they want the look of ordinary travel photos on their page, as those are the kinds of photos their customers would generally make.

So imagine a situation where facebook and some big information website like MSN or Yahoo! have merged, and they have some commercial areas and some non-commercial areas, and the licenses for content in the non-commercial areas allow content to be harvested for commercial purposes. Well, that makes these non-commercial websites more valuable commodities and can't be good for the photographic profession.

[darr]

When I decided to retire from the portrait and special event business, I bought a paper shredder that could shred 120/135 film and proofs. My son spent most of his 5th grade year running the shredder for an hour or two after school. People asked why didn't I just throw away all the negatives and proofs. The thought of shredding all that work occurred to me one day while on vacation in the Florida Keys: The hubby and I were partying it up in a typical Conch Republic bar when I went into the bathroom and saw the walls covered with a lacquered collage of professional proofs from weddings, special events, family portraits, etc. There were thousands of photos used on the walls of both bathrooms. I knew then that whenever I decided to retire out of the business, I needed to make sure all those faces that trusted me with their special moments did not end up on some sleazy bathroom wall.

BTW, the kid got paid by the hour and I know I did the responsible thing on my end to protect my client's privacy. I probably thwarted any legal issues that could have risen to the occasion if all that work got into the hands of some crazed/creative art student, etc.

You just never know how things will go ...

[Bruce Watson]

Found this discussion on the Photoattorney Blog. There has already been a discussion about Facebook claiming the license to use your images for commercial purposes. The added wrinkles appear to be that Facebook also assumes that you have the permissions (model releases) for such use, and that you indemnify Facebook if they use your images and get sued.

I'm always impressed by a) how much the law lets companies abuse their position, and b) how little people understand that they personally are agreeing to allow themselves to be abused.

Good spot and explanation Ed.