Oh, untwist your knickers. God forbid someone would want to make a return on their investment after providing you with a free service for two years.
What do you think is going to happen, anyway? Nike is going to use that picture of you dancing for their new print campaign? Nobody is going to risk a lawsuit by using your photo for anything major without talking to you first, no matter what “agree”s you’ve clicked on the past. Instagram is just trying to show their investors that they are not blindly throwing money away and have at least some kind of long term plan that may generate income. When did making money become synonymous with evil, anyway? They’re not even asking you to do anything. They’re trying to make money out of thin air and you’re whining about it. Instead of knocking capitalism all day why don’t you try it? You’ve tried living off other people’s money for twenty years, now give making your own a whirl.
Your photos are not that valuable. You’re not Terry Richardson, you’re you. You’ve been using this incredibly handy software to upload your pics so your friends can see how cute your dog is, what you ate for lunch, and what your socks look like when you watch TV. If you find they’re using your photos in a way you deem inappropriate, delete your account. It’s that simple. But that’s not going to happen. Because you don’t matter. Shit, half of you seem to have your accounts set to private already.
It seems like the more inconsequential people’s achievements become, the more sanctimonious about them they get. Your Facebook profile and the stupid photos you take on your phone are not bars of gold. Get over yourself.
-GAVIN McINNES
There are so many photo editing apps to fulfill my narcissistic need to take an artsy pic of my pho, why use the one that wants to sell my stuff without disclosure or permission?
Will Instagram sell *my* pic? With the volume of self-indulgent crap populating the site everyday, probably not. The thing is they want the right to sell it without telling me to whom.
It’s wrong.
I deleted the app this morning, back to Camera+ and rediscovering Flickr.
A million times yes.
There was a bubble in startup funding for the last few years and VCs and “entrepreneurs” are freaking out. They’re starting to try to get serious about revenue because the curtains are dropping on this charade of multi-million dollar companies run by spoled brat 26 year olds.
Money is not the problem, the problem is the ethic. If you post your photos on instagram they are not YOUR photos anymore for now, but their photos.
This is the sanest commentary on this whole nonsense I’ve read. I am genuinely unafraid that Instagram is going to decide to sell the photos I’ve taken of my drunk friends, dead animals, and shitty signs.
Preach brother, preach.
For the record, I am not Terry Richardson but he DOES have a Instagram. So do MOST professional photographers. To not be able to opt out of policy that is opening themselves up to make money off you is the problem here.
Instagram seems to be the Facebook of photo sharing and so what, they already rules and regulate steal all our rights, what else is new? Don’t like it then make your own uber popular social platform.
true as usual Gavin… what I do not understand is who people think pay for the backend and endless updates to the front end of apps like this? It is a great service, and it needs to generate income to survive. It is great because many people use it. The more people use it, the more it costs to run. Now, it needs to generate income to continue, as will any other ‘free’ service (unless it is run by the government who pays for it with taxes)
Gavin, you are so wrong on this. First of all Instagram and Facebook need us, its not that they are letting us use their software for free. Its that we are giving them our content, our photos, our locations, our ideas and our ID, and making them very rich, for free. Flickr dont have have the rights to sell your photos, why should instagram? Facebook (who ripped off myspace completely and lucked out with the same model for students not bands) dont really promote you as much you think, if you really want to get your message/content out there, you have to pay for it, In fact Facebook will block you if you start firing out more than 100 links to friends, even if you have 5000 friends on FB. Instagram is FB also these days, and they want all your content, your photos and your ID. And will make even more money having control of your whole online status. George Orwell would be turning in his fucking grave.
Dude INTSAGRAM say they say that can sell your photos (as they own them for ads) to third parties for ads, thats fucked! This is fucking fucked!
Dude Instagram say that they can sell your photos for ads without your consent, as they own them. And this is not fucked Gavin? These photos are not bars of gold eh? Meanwhile they can sell a picture of you on a sofa for a campaign and make millions? You are no making sense at all. If it was 95 and you were sitting at your McGill St office in Montreal, Im sure you and your two buds would be printing articles against this in a state of rage. Come on man!
@Content Lover, you just made my head explode. Who and how do you think instagram is going to “sell” these photos? By making an instagram photo shop so sell all the low resolution shots of your fancy breakfast this morning???
The kinds of terms the companies use in their T&C’s with regards to photos is to stop leeches suing them if a promo shot turns up somewhere or if at somepoint a photo is scanned by recognition software and us used to generate relevant advertising.
Just stop using instagram if you think they need you so much, and stop complaining about a service that many people have worked on for a long time to create something that works really well.
Agree, not gonna be using Instagram.
get over YOURSELF, gavin.
Hello, I am a wealthy businessman looking to procure a photograph of a person on a couch. I am willing to pay millions. Hire a photographer you say? He’ll only charge a few hundred dollars you ad? No thank you. I’d like a grainy, 300 pixel wide photo that is not exactly what I had in mind. I’m going for that option.
Switch to flickr everyone!
People would totally Pay. $0.99 to $1.99 for a instagram. hell, maybe even more.
that would bring in revenue and keep our photos private! did they offer that as a solution, no… they instead said, we plan to take away your rights and use your photo…oh and we won’t tell you or contact you! PS. you also can’t sue us!
“You’re not Terry Richardson, you’re you.” My new go-to insult that will hurt no one’s feelings.
Just to point out, it’s not Instagram that is changing this policy after providing two years of free service. It is facebook trying to make money off a product they brought.
That is fair enough, and I don’t think that’s what people are concerned about. There are better ways to go about it, and changing the T&C’s breaks almost every copyright law out there.
The biggest thing is that as someone above said, there are professional photographers that use this service as well, and they won’t be happy about giving away their material like that. If it was going to be sold, then they would sell it and make money.
@RED – there are a lot of pictures on instagram, and most, are not 300 pixel wide. Please know what you’re talking about before posting..
“It seems like the more inconsequential people’s achievements become, the more sanctimonious about them” Like this website?
This is a good topic, I mean fuck theres limits right?
Check this also
http://goldwoody.com/instagram-is-selling-your-pictures-for-ads-as-they-own-them/
I don’t care if Instagram sells my shit. I just want some of the cash. They could have instituted a very forward-thinking profit-sharing model, that would monetize and democratize this particular social media network, but instead they decided to just rape people. Appalling and disappointing.
Why the fuck can’t people understand this!? There is no such thing as a free lunch. Boom. Done. If you don’t like it, stop using the service you weren’t paying for anydamway. Geez.
[...] at ZDNet insisting this is a move too far, and is totally unacceptable. Others are pulling out the “it’s a business, what did you expect” [...]
This is one of the few written about this subject that actually makes sense. The general public actually feels threatened by this.
Do you actually think someone at Ogilvy & Mather or Wieden & Kennedy marked the date the instagram TOS kicks in on their calendar?? Seriously if you did not think your ” yearinAirForceOnes” series was not free advertising for nike then wow, you are a moron.
Do you honestly think someone wants to buy your photos of your kid running on the beach at the west palm hilton!( actual example I read somewhere).
What is going to happen:
Tourism Boards in select cities will ask for permission on these photos.
Porn companies will appropriate images either way.
Instagram users photos ( with & without consent) are all ready being used by major news outlets.
No major advertising phptogpraher is making millions of dollars off a single image. Not one and neither will they.
& like Gavin said, no one gives a shit about your sandwhich/ cat or kid.
Carry on, nothing to see here.
You seem to have completely missed the entire point of people’s problem with the new TOS, Gavin. No one but you is talking about “complaints” with Instagram making money. The complaints were strictly with how the TOS was worded, specifically that people’s pictures could be used in advertisements. Your “you’re all nobodies” dismissal of that wording is what is irrelevant. Case in point: the complaints have forced Instagram to change (sorry, “clarify”) their policy to no longer include using other people’s photographs in advertisements without permission. That simple protection of rights seems to elude your libertarian mind. I know you think this is a win for the Communists, but the rest of us realize it’s actually protecting us. Hopefully they can come up with some new never-before-discovered way of using advertisements that don’t include using other people’s creative property. Dipshit.
PS
All the “lol you think they’re gonna use your 300×300 pixel shot” people, you do know that all accounts have moved to web accessible profiles (instagram.com/[your username]) that use near-original resolution photos, right? Lol, no, of course you don’t.
FLICKR EVERYONE AND EVERY BONER! FLICKR!!!!