Protecting Your Rights Online - 11/17/08

Read the fine print of user agreements before uploading your photos online

Issues of copyright and protecting photographers’ rights may seem like they’re only pertinent for professionals who make any or all of their income from the sale and licensing of their photographic talents. But amateur photographers should also be aware of the ways in which photo contests, online communities and forums license a user’s pictures when they’re uploaded to a Web site. Even if you’re not concerned about getting paid for your shots, you’re probably concerned with ensuring that images of your friends and family aren’t exploited for someone else’s capital gain—or even for no gain if it puts you, your work, or your friends and family in a bad light.

Online social networking and media-sharing sites are increasingly utilizing comprehensive user agreements that explicitly state that by using the service (which may even be as simple as uploading a photograph to the site for use on your own private page), the photographer is agreeing to allow certain uses of their work—without any compensation or consideration.

In most cases, this legal-ease is simply to protect the sites, and they’re written in enough plain language to make that clear. But not all sites use the same agreements, and while some expressly explain that they make no claim of ownership over user-generated content, others specifically do make such claims.

What they all do share in common is some form of required agreement before allowing you, the user, to interact with the site. It’s important to understand what you’re agreeing to before you upload your pictures to these sites or enter photography contests online. Here are three examples of fine print from the Terms of Use of some very popular Web sites. It’s clear that each reflects a different approach to the licensing of uploaded images.

Facebook: “…You automatically grant… to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat… and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise…”

MySpace: “MySpace does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or any other materials… you post on or through the MySpace Services.”

YouTube: “…You retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions. However, by submitting User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use… User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successors’ and affiliates’) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.”

These agreements are in place to protect the huge companies behind a Web site from a lawsuit in case you or your content do something worthy of legal action. Most of them, too, do a good job of explaining how and why the rights licensing works.

It’s important to always read the fine print and ask yourself what exactly do the user agreements of contests and sites say. What are the rights that I, as a photographer, am granting? Why should I give away my work free of charge? Even if the answer to these questions is ‘It’s fine, I don’t care,’ at least when you read the fine print you know what rights you’re giving away, and it’s your own personal choice. An informed Web user is an empowered Web user.

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