The ownership of online photos has come under scrutiny, following the announcement by World Entertainment News Network, a news and photo agency, that it has become the exclusive photo agency partner of Twitpic.
Twitpic is a service that allows users to upload images and link them to Twitter. The service has over 20 million users.
According to reports, the deal with World Entertainment News Network will allow the agency to sell images posted on Twitpic for publication and take legal action against those who use such images commercially without its permission.
The agency has said it is only interested in the photos posted by verified celebrity accounts, but the details of the deal are not clear and professional photographers have raised concerns about the agency potentially profiting from their work.
World Entertainment News has, however, reportedly previously signed a similar deal with smaller online photo service Plixi, before the agreement terminated when Lockerz acquired the service.
The new deal has also stirred up latent concerns regarding the control that people have over content that they post online.
Utter chutzpah
Paul Jacobson, of Jacobson Attorneys, says the Twitpic deal is very worrying.
“That sort of commercial use of users' content is not really mentioned in its terms of service except peripherally when it talks about being able to use user content "in any media formats and through any media channels". That is pretty broad, notes Jacobson.
“The licence effectively gives Twitpic the right to do whatever it wants to do with users' content and its provisions dealing with its commercial rights are nothing short of a chutzpah.
“It takes a broad licence from users (royalty-free) and then declares its intention to take action against anyone who makes commercial use of the content without its permission.”
Twitpic users kicked up a fuss earlier this month when it amended its terms of service, leaving the window open for it to sell user content. At the time, Twitpic issued a statement to quell rumours and emphasise that users still own their content.
As Jacobson points out, however: “This deal is clearly what it had in mind when it prepared its current terms.”
Suspiciously similar?
Facebook has often been the target of chain messages warning recipients that the social network “owns” their photographs and other content posted on user profiles. Such claims have been consistently denied by Facebook.
Twitpic's terms of service say the site's users retain ownership rights to the content they upload. But it also claims “a worldwide, nonexclusive, royalty-free, sub-licensable and transferable licence to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the content in connection with the service and Twitpic's (and its successors' and affiliates') business.”
Facebook's statement of rights and responsibilities with regard to sharing users' content and information is phrased in a similar manner to that of Twitpic's terms of service.
Facebook says: “You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings.”
A sub-section, however, states: “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 licence to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ('IP Licence').”
User revolt
Jacobson explains that, while Facebook potentially reserves the right to do something similar, “the 2009 revolt showed Facebook that its users won't tolerate that sort of thing”.
“Facebook also places emphasis on user trust, but it has abused that trust in the past.”
Jacobson warns that users should pay careful attention to terms of use and shouldn't complain when they blindly click “ok” and find their content being used in ways they didn't anticipate.
“There are online services that make more of an effort to respect users' rights over their content and are more transparent about how they make use of user content.
“Google, for example, is fairly specific in its terms about how it uses user content (for the most part in connection with Google services), but the licences are pretty broad and even Google could theoretically abuse the licence - although I think this is unlikely,” says Jacobson.
“Twitpic is being very cavalier about how it is using user content and my advice to current users is to seriously consider removing their content and to use a different service.”
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