As social media permeates our lives, increasingly, attention has been directed to the issue of ownership and online content. In 2013, Internet users became hysterical (an estimated 4 million users deleted their accounts in response) when the online social media site Instagram launched its new terms of service, which gave Instagram a license to use its users' photography and images in advertisement, absent compensation or express approval from the user (under the terms, user consent or approval was granted when the user uploaded the photograph to the site). So the question follows: who owns your online content and what can social media sites actually do with it? While you might not like the answer, I’ll set the record straight, or at very least, try to add some clarity to an often misunderstood and confusing aspect of intellectual property rights with respect to what you post on social media networks.
On most social media sites, the user owns the copyrights and other intellectual property rights (assuming they’re the actual owner of such rights in the first place) to the content they post; however, typically imbedded in the user agreements are often broad and far-reaching licenses or permissions, which allow the websites to use user’s content in whatever way it sees fit. For example, while Instagram eventually abandoned their plans to implement the new user agreement discussed above, what many people may not realize is that Instagram’s actions were not all that outrageous or atypical from other major social media sites. In fact, most social media and photo-sharing websites have similar policies (notably social media tycoons Twitter and Facebook).
Specifically, Facebook’s terms of service grant Facebook full rights to use your profile picture and your name in its advertisements. Moreover, through mere use of Facebook.com (under user default settings) the user actually permits Facebook to utilize and monetize on your posted content for just about anything it wants. Twitter’s user policy mirrors the user terms and conditions of Facebook by granting Twitter a world-wide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute user content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed). In layman terms, what does that mean? Simply put: It means Twitter can use the photos and content you post for just about anything, and not ask you, and not pay you. So can Facebook. Dedicated websites such as Flickr may not be as bad as they won’t use your photos for advertisement; however, the user agreement still licenses the site to use your photos as it wants.
The bottom line is that all of these social media and photo-sharing websites’ terms provide the websites tremendous power and flexibility of the use of user images and content you post. Most people don’t know about these terms, because they simply click “Accept Terms of Use” without reading them, and start posting; or even assuming readers did read them, there remains doubt as to whether an ordinary Internet user would even understand the difficult to read legal jargon in which these terms and permissions are deeply buried. So, what’s an online user to do? On some websites, there are “opt out” provisions, but even then, opt out provisions may not protect your content entirely from being used, and terms may also change without you knowing. I suggest that if you feel strongly about controlling your images, photography, or other postings, simply don’t share them or otherwise post them via online social media channels.
