Can somebody explain to me what the big deal is about Instagram and these new terms of service? I can't fathom that anything but 1% of 1% of photos taken there are good enough to be used commercially, and if folks are so afraid that their pictures of Starbucks lattes will be used in some kind of marketing campaign (in which case they should actually be flattered), what exactly is stopping users from removing location information from the pictures they want to keep private?
For me, if the local coffee shop here wants to dig up some pictures I took of their business to help them get more customers, why not let them? I'm not Richard Avedon, and I never, ever, expected to profit from my Instagram photography. I'm more than happy to support small businesses and Instagram. Have a ball, guys. It's all public anyway.
The big deal is that someone is profiting from my work without my consent and it isn't me.
It's that we (the people) get slammed by DMCA violations for taking someone else's content (for private consumption). When a huge corporation takes ours (and gets paid for it), what recourse do we have?
It's that these corporations can change the rules on us in the middle of the game. It's the classic bait and switch.
It's that we're not even getting asked or given credit.
The Instagram developer page (http://instagram.com/developer) says users own their images. They expect third party developers to respect that. Why won't they?
Technically we _are_ giving our consent by using the service. In fact, we already agreed to the current terms, which state "We reserve the right to alter these Terms of Use at any time." It's not even a classic bait-and-switch. It's clearly stated in the contract we all signed up for.
I agree that it's sort of uncool on Instagram's part, but as fellow app developers, shouldn't we also be siding with Instagram for their right to protect the interest of their product?
I hate to be the guy that points this out, but it's an important distinction.
but as fellow app developers, shouldn't we also be siding with Instagram for their right to protect the interest of their product?
Huh?? How about this instead: as fellow app developers, shouldn't we stop producing shitty ad and 'free' apps and start monetizing them from the start? And how about we actually care about our customers and growing our business instead of the 'strike it rich' corporate acquisition? How about we actually have a solid business model in mind and not sucking on the angel/vc teets and doing the hard thing - self funding?
We all have choices. In an ever increasing world where you are the product, it's up to all of us to make something better. Ads and 'free' are a waste of fucking time. But everyone seems to want their 'free' investment money to launch the next Instagram.
Jesus, I feel like I just recruited for a Stallman seminar. :) Maybe he has a point after all..
Your view just plain scares me, there wouldn't be so much heat over this right now if it was something the majority of people including app developers thought was the right thing to do. There's plenty of examples of things that I feel is uncool, but I can understand it from the business side. A few weeks ago, when people went nuts over the possibility of ads showing up in peoples instagram feeds, I was like, fine. In every single terms of service that I have ever read, that line, "we reserve the right to alter these terms of use at any time", appears in some form or another. That is not an end all, and it's not an important distinction. What you alter the terms to still matters, especially on this big of a scale.
You make it sound like if they did this and didn't tell anyone about it, just opted everyone in, and started selling off photos. That you'd be ok with this. Not sure where you draw the line, but facebook/instagram finally decided to cross it. Users of products do have rights, and honestly app developers should head this as an important warning/lesson. You should always have a right to protect the interest of your product, but sometimes, when you decide to monetize a service years after its conception, you mess up. Even facebook/instagram can make huge mistakes. Instagram is going to take a gigantic hit from this.
My view scares me, too, but I think you have the right idea: It's a terrible business decision. Much like the Netflix/Qwikster ordeal, I imagine the result to be some sort of mass exodus.
Obviously, our use of any application is simply a privilege, and participation is not compulsory. As creators of the application, it's Instagram right to control their application how they see fit.
That point is easily overlooked. It's the principle I'm defending, not the decision.
My hope is that great companies will make great decisions. I think we've seen a little bit of that from organizations like Google and MapBox doing the "right thing", and they have great products to show for it.
First, would anyone sign a credit card agreement that said "we can change the terms at any time without telling you"? No. In fact, a material change to a contract means that either party can back out of the original contract. This is how people get out of cell phone contracts when rates are changed without having to pay the ETF.
Second, yes, the new terms are exactly why people are pissed. They don't like the new terms and they are upset that Instagram would form something so distasteful on them (or try to do so).
Just because Instagram is legally protected doesn't mean everyone should be happy about their decision and keep using the service. That's how a market economy works. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it will be popular in the market.
As an app developer, the lesson you should take away from this is that your users will be outraged at seemingly perfectly cromulent changes in your TOS (remember, sometimes you & your users have different use cases in mind for your app).
You just have to have a little bit of foresight into this, understand that users have emotions, if not total understanding of law, and figure out if the changes that benefit you will outweigh the pr hit. I think it is obvious in this case (and probably 9 times out of 10) that the owners of the app stand to benefit more than they'll get hurt.
There are many things that they would not be able to add to a contract. Requiring you to commit an illegal act, for instance. Or beginning to charge for their service, without giving you the ability to cancel your account.
Instagram's change is in one of the grey areas that makes contract law interesting.
(I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, yada yada)
Just because you agree to a thing doesn't mean you like it. When enough people have been sufficiently pissed off about an issue, you get demonstrations, riots, and all sorts of mass protests about The State Of That Thing We Don't Want/Like.
I'd really like to see internet protests driving some actual worthwhile changes, not least because on the whole they're a lot less destructive than an actual riot[1]
As developers, instagram can do absolutely anything (legal) they like with their app, and we should totally support them in that.
As a business, they're somewhat beholden to their customers to either do things the customers want (and not hte things the customers don't want), or find a new set of customers.
Otherwise, they stop being a business.
[1] except maybe CloudFlare ends up with a slightly higher bandwidth bill for the DDOS.
Because Instagram can make whatever TOS they feel is necessary when they are interacting with your data.
You are using Instagram's servers and products display data. Therefore they can, essentially, do whatever they want with said data if you agrees to their TOS. Why do people still feel they have some recourse when you are volunteering your data to a private company in a public domain?
The main issue is that basically it removes the concept of private photos. The new TOS allows Instagram to use your photos any way they want and removes any responsibility of keeping private pictures private.
Those pictures of you doing a keg stand at a Toga party which you shared only with your closest friends? Well now they are in a nationwide PSA about binge drinking.
Those pictures of you with your ex girlfriend on a beach vacation? Those are now in Carnival ad about whisking your loved ones on a cruise. Your wife is pissed and even deleting the photo off Instagram doesn't do anything about it.
If you are ok with all your photos becoming public, then sure this isn't a big deal. I think many people aren't.
Maybe I'm just old and cynical, but after seeing how most online services work, I just refuse to upload/share any photograph that I wouldn't be happy seeing splashed on the front page of the newspaper.
I apply the same test to pretty much everything I do online these days, and as a result, I maintain a dignified silence through most social media channels.
I whitewalled my Facebook a long time ago, don't 'like' any pages, and provide minimal personal information only to friends.
I don't use Twitter because I figure, even if I had an account purely to follow people, the individuals/organizations I follow could come back to haunt me. The same applies to YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr, Foursquare, etc.
There's little difference to me between public on the internet and public on Instagram. They both ignore my photo's original privacy controls (to share with a specific set of users).
Flickr and Google (among others) don't claim the kind of license that Instagram demands in the new ToS. So this is only a big deal in that there are some alternatives that don't suck and are really easy to switch to.
If they want to put content users in touch with content providers, they can do what Flickr did: make a way for them to do so. There are a ton of ways to monetize that, too, without dialing it up all the way to "we own your content". I bet most users would love a request system that lets businesses use their photos free of charge with attribution if they click "yes".
What? Instagram's current TOS includes the following:
"By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly ("private") will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services."
So the "new" ToS is not as far from the old one as you would think.
Can somebody explain to me what the big deal is about Instagram and these new terms of service? I can't fathom that anything but 1% of 1% of photos taken there are good enough to be used commercially [...]
Let's look at your claim that around "1% of 1%", or one in ten thousand, of Instagram photos are of commercial quality. With 5 million+ photos uploaded per day [1], that's 500 photos a day.
It seems to me that the new ToS made some people want to leave the service, because that's not what they signed up for. You obviously made another choice.
Human-produced carbon output is only like 1% of 1% of the atmosphere. No big deal right? Murderers are only like 1% of 1% of people. No big deal right?
I think Instagram missed a GREAT PR opportunity here -- Imagine if they came out and made this an "opt-in" option for people interested in having their photos featured. Even with the odds being low, I'd happily participate, as I think it would be ridiculously cool to see my photos featured.
I'd imagine they'd easily get enough participation to get them the content they need to experiment with this.
I agree. Instagram is simply going to use interesting photos of places and items to help market those places.
Someone you follow tagged a photo of a latte at a new coffee shop in town? Well, now that photo might show up as a sponsored post in the same way Facebook likes generate sponsored posts.
I generally like seeing the photos of the people I am subscribed to, so seeing them attached to a location or product ad doesn't bother me in the slightest.
You might feel differently if you were a professional photographer or a celebrity (even a minor local one). I don't use instagram, and I'm not sure if the change would cause me to leave if I did use instagram. But I'm not going to start using it, because I expect that anyone who values their pictures is going to leave, so it will suck.
Most of the people I follow on instagram are family and friends. They take pictures of their families doing stuff I'm interested in knowing about like going out to eat, gathering for holidays, hiking, or whatever. They use IG as an easier and more visually pleasing way to keep in touch and share moments of their lives.
So while there are a number of people that use the free service to promote their professional work or celebrity selves, it seems like the vast majority of IG users are in the same boat as me and just don't care about the TOS change.
Maybe. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if the vast majority of users that you described are pretty indifferent about which photo sharing service they use, as long as there are other people they know using it. But the "power users" (I hate that term) will care about the service they use, and will influence the others. These people could be friends and family who like to follow news orgs/photographers/celebs through IG, they could be friends and family who are just enthusiastic amateurs, etc., the point is, they don't necessarily have to be celebrities or professionals that you personally follow.
So, even if you don't care about the TOS change, it could degrade your instagram experience enough that you leave. I should emphasize that this is pure speculation in an area I don't understand at all, so take it for what it's worth. And the "sucks" in my earlier comment was of course only directed at what I would want to get out of instagram and wasn't meant as a general statement.
ps, given their latest announcement, this discussion may or may not be entirely academic.
I think the fact that I was giving a personal opinion made it pretty clear that I was sharing a biased point of view. My point is that I personally disagree with pseut's point of view that "once professional photographers and celebs leave instagram, the service will be worthless".
For me, if the local coffee shop here wants to dig up some pictures I took of their business to help them get more customers, why not let them? I'm not Richard Avedon, and I never, ever, expected to profit from my Instagram photography. I'm more than happy to support small businesses and Instagram. Have a ball, guys. It's all public anyway.