Sans T-Shirt Moose wrote:
> Legal terms and reality are often unrelated. Are there people who will be
> happy to use images off Instagram, or any web
> display, no matter how poor quality? Absolutely.
Actually, there has been some pretty fascinating and decent stuff that
has been done by professional and expert photographers through
Instagram. I think many of us are formulating our opinions based on
some junk sent to us by our relatives with junk cellphones.
> Are they any more likely to pay Instagram for the images they cop off the
> screen than any other site? Absolutely not.
Actually, I would disagree with this assessment. Let's say that I want
to illustrate my www.Zone-10.com website with Instagram photos--not
just as a means of editorial content, but purely as decoration. Can I
grab screen shots and do that? Yes, but not legally. Can I buy them
from Instagram for, oh, say $1 apiece? With this new agreement the
answer is a blatent yes! Instagram pockets the dollar and the person
who made the photograph doesn't even know the image has been used,
much less get even a penny.
The argument you put forth, Moose, is remarkably similar to that put
forth by those who didn't see "microstock" killing the stock-image
industry either. As always, you have a certain percentage of people
producing quality images and just because they happen to use Instagram
for whatever reason, they've handed an entire profit potential to
another company with nothing tangible in return. There is a HUGE
market for microstock photographs. Unfortunately, only a small handful
of people are making any significant money producing the images, but
the microstock agencies are doing pretty well.
What has me knotted up, though, is model-releases. The way the
user-agreement is written, Instagram wipes its hands free of any
liability in concern to model-releases and opens up the photographer
to lawsuits if one of the images is sold without a model-release. So,
basically, we're doubly hosed because we have to make sure that we
never Instagram a photo without model-releases of everybody in it and
we get no money for the use of the photo. So, the photographer assumes
100% of the liability without any benefits.
This really is uglier than what meets the eye.
> Just because they claim the right to do so doesn't mean they will.
They will and already are. I've been pointed to several examples
already. The existing agreement is pretty open-ended and they've been
exploiting it without telling anybody. The agreement change that they
shot themselves in the foot with just tells us what they are already
starting to do.
> I suppose my deeper question is why anybody on this list would post images on
> such a service - and if so, why they would
> care what happens to them after they have been mangled.
Did you rump get frozen to the peak of that mountain top you are
sitting on? Your bias is showing.
AG
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
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