T here’s so much buzz these last few days about photographers and others posting images to Facebook, that I decided to do a bit of research for myself and share what I found with you….
Let me start with a disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, so please take this blog post as a starting point to do your own research and make your own decisions about if and where you post your hard earned, valuable images.
I’m more lucky than smart, but for whatever reason, probably due to skepticism, a long time ago, I decided that I wasn’t going to post my photos directly on Facebook. When I create a post on my website, I announce it on my Facebook page with a link back to my own website. Perhaps that was a wise decision.
In short, here’s what I discovered about Facebook’s new terms and conditions:
My search began with a reputable photography organization called ASPM American Society of Media Photographers. In a nutshell, here’s what they say. If you’re interested in the long version, the full story is here.
Q: What Can I Do about the new Facebook terms and conditions regarding use of the photos I post on Facebook?
A: There are a few things you can do about this to prevent it from becoming the norm for online services.
Share smart — We recognize the value that Facebook has as a tool for many photographers in marketing themselves. We suggest that if you are going to share, don’t post your images directly on Facebook; instead post a link from a publication platform that you control, such as your own website.
What about posting photos on Twitter and Instagram? What happens to images I post on those two sites?
A photo posted on Twitter remains the intellectual property of the user but Twitter’s terms give the company “a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sub-license)”. In practice, that gives Twitter almost total control over the image and the ability to do just about anything with it. The company claims the right to use, modify or transmit it your photo any way.
From my cursory research about Instagram’s terms and conditions, I’d say that they are generally similar to Facebook’s terms (Facebook acquired Instagram in mid 2012).
The bottom line is, as they say…. “There is no free lunch”. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are all businesses. They provide a “free” platform for anyone who wants to share information, post images and information about themselves. Information is power, information is valuable. Facebook collects and sells information, that’s what they do best. For Mark Zuckerberg and those who invest in Facebook, selling your information and benefiting from the images posted on their servers is, to put it mildly, enormously profitable (Facebook’s last quarter earnings were $3.2 billion).
There’s nothing wrong with a company being profitable, in fact, making money is the point of most businesses. So, please don’t be upset about what Facebook making money, it’s their responsibility, their prerogative, their business model, their reason to exist.
If you disagree with Facebook’s terms and conditions, consider not posting your images there. As for the pictures that you’ve already posted, yes, you can delete them from your Facebook albums, but since they may have already been shared, it may be too late to “take them back”.
If you disagree but continue to allow Facebook to do what you’ve given them the right to do with your images, then why not purchase some Facebook stock? At least you’ll have the chance to share in some of the profits they’ll be making with your photography.
Thanks for the post. I’m not a lawyer either, and I’m also not a professional photographer, but I do think a bit about what I post on line and how it might be used. You don’t bring it up but I think one of the explanations that FB and others give for requiring broad rights to publish your photos is that by simply sharing them, even based on your privacy settings, they want to make sure that they don’t get sued for someone seeing them that you didn’t think would see them. In other words, they are potentially liable for simply doing what you ask them to do, publish them, if they don’t have the explicit rights and in retrospect the user decides they didn’t like they way they were shared.
I haven’t seen them pulling photos from people’s accounts to use in third party advertising but I would be interested to hear of actual examples if anyone knows of them. I don’t doubt that it’s possible, but it seems a little unlikely, and my vague understanding is that this isn’t their reason for their broad policies.
My approach has been very similar to yours, anything that I care about I keep on my own site and link to. Seems better to drive traffic to my own site anyway and I have much more control over how things are displayed there. Social media is a really powerful tool for outreach, and a very easy way to share little teasers.
Keep up the great work, I love the blog.
Hi Josh,
Thanks for your thoughts and analysis about Facebook, you make some excellent and important points, and I agree that Facebook probably has many of their policies in place as legal protection for themselves. I totally agree with you that Facebook is indeed an excellent place to put “teasers” and drive traffic back to a website which one had more control over (a personal website). Thanks for taking the time to comment. Happy Holidays, Karl
I always put a logo on my images. This way they won’t use the images!