What's going on with photo-sharing?

A number of recent events have brought photo-sharing into the spotlight and it made us realise that there’s no wonder there’s a lot of confusion about relating to privacy, copyright and ownership.

The helicopter crash in London earlier this week is a prime example of how user-generated, or user-captured images and video were the first to report events as they unfolded. It proved again that unexpected events cannot be covered as quickly by an army of press photographers and freelancers – you simply cannot get to the scene quicker than someone who is at the scene already.

The Evening Standard used one of the pictures posted by @craiglet, without their express permission, although they have confirmed that they were unable to contact the user and would be happy to discuss compensation with them if it was sought.

Most news outlets acknowledge that the owner of the picture remains the user that posted it, and Twitter’s own Terms of Service do nothing to change that, but they do give Twitter the licence to use any content, including pictures, if they want to, and also to sub-licence that content to pretty much anyone.

So why then the backlash in Instagram Terms of Service(to take effect Saturday 19^th January 2013)? Their changes effectively bring their TOS in line with that of Twitter in many senses. Perhaps it is the change that people are concerned about, as well as the manner in which they went about it. What had been a free to use service with some very simple rules was now apparently trying to assume ownership of users’ content. They have since changed the wording but they ultimately retain a position that your use of the service grants Instagram and the group of companies to which it belongs, a comprehensive licence, and permission to sub-licence user content.

And in a more recent if somewhat less amplified move, Getty and Google have agreed terms giving all Google Apps users access to several thousand Getty Images, produced by Getty and Flickr users, for free (reported on aphotoeditor.com). The reported fee received by photographers is just $12 as a one off payment. This could of course see those images used many thousands of times each in presentations and company documents without being credited (all of the meta data has been removed), and without the photographer being paid any more each time.

What seems to be becoming more and more apparent is that for a few years users have been happily generating content. It’s fun, it’s engaging, and we see a lot of it going on. But there comes a point, when another organisation wants to profit from that content that expectations are starting to change. Users are increasingly aware that their picture might help sell more newspapers or drive more traffic to your website, or it might help your company document be more impactful or close a sale opportunity, and it therefore has a monetary value. The user is increasingly empowered – even encouraged by others – to claim what is rightfully theirs, and we think these instances are beginning to indicate a shift, not way from content sharing, but certainly towards an understanding that content producers deserve to be paid, and at very least credited, for their contribution.