A judge has granted a summary judgment stating that defendants Washington Post and AFP improperly used without license photographs owned by photographer Daniel Morel. Morel took photographs within hours of the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and posted links to them on Twitter. AFP had argued that any photos posted on the internet and linked to from Twitter were available for all to use without licence.
News outlets improperly used photos posted to Twitter: judge
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/15/us-socialmedia-copyright-ruling-idUSBRE90E11P20130115
The case is not yet concluded, as determination of willfulness and damages will be determined at trial.
The case highlights the evolving area of copyright law as applied to photographs used in social media. While Twitter's service terms do allow the reposting and rebroadcasting of users' images in certain circumstances, such as "retweeting," they do not apply to commercial use.
There is a tendency in the social media business and photographic support businesses, such as printing of digital photographs, to treat consumer photos as "not copyrighted" even though existing copyright law states explicitly that all photographs are protected by copyright from the moment of capture, and that the copyright is owned by the photographer.
Although this law applies even to supposedly non-professional photographs, it is in the interest of social media companies such as Google+, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to insist upon unlimited distribution rights as a non-negotiable part of their Terms of Service. Instagram recently changed their TOS to take a right to use customer photographs for any purpose, which could have included advertising, without compensating the owner of the photograph.
More on Instagram's TOS:
Instagram's TOS Go Into Effect Today
Terms of Use • Instagram
What Instagram’s New Terms of Service Mean for You
The TOS of companies that make prints from digital photographs also overreach in most cases. The actual wording of the contracts makes it clear that when you upload photographs to Sams Club, Costco, Wal-Mart, Target, SnapFish, SmugMug, Mpix, Wolf Camera, Shutterfly, Flickr, and so on that the company gains a perpetual license to reproduce your photograph, with no compensation to you.
Sams Club TOS
Excerpt from the Sams Club TOS:
"You grant to samsclub.com a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, unrestricted, world-wide right and license to access, use, copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, perform, communicate to the public, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, and otherwise use such Materials (in whole or in part) in connection with the Site and/or the Products, using any form, media or technology now known or later developed, without providing compensation to you or any other person, without any liability to you or any other person, and free from any obligation of confidence or other duties on the part of samsclub.com, its affiliates and their respective licensees;"
In short, you must be extremely vigilant when getting prints made from your better photographs, because some larger businesses are looking to monetize your content. To avoid losing rights to your own pictures, insist on a new, separate contract that grants a right to the print-making company to copy your files and photos only for the purpose of making prints for you as customer, and limits the time frame on the license to no more than 30 days.
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