Last night, as a friend and I sat in my apartment, we found ourselves discussing the benefits and drawbacks of Flickr vs. Facebook as a photo sharing platform. Her feeling was that Facebook is a far more prevalent sharing system across the general public of 18-30 somethings. Despite being a purpose-built photo sharing site (and subsequently social network), her experience with Flickr is limited - primarily because she’s had no reason to use it.
Alternatively, I use Flickr all the time and have relatively few pictures on Facebook. Of course, this was a moment of two worlds colliding. Neither of us was necessarily wrong, but rather we have different interests in how our photos are used and shared. What bothered me was that I really couldn’t decide which platform would better serve the needs of the situation we were thinking through (I’m supposed to know these things, right?).
Though I hadn’t given up on the thought, I had moved on for the time being until I noticed this article this morning. Dean over at the PhotoPreneur blog wrote an interesting discussion on the finer points of Facebook’s privacy policy - you know, that thing you never actually read and just click accept every time you sign up for something new online these days. It was this statement that really caught his attention:
By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to 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, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
Yes, there’s a lot of legalese to get through in there, but the gist of the statement is this: by uploading a photo to Facebook, you’re granting them the right to take, change, use, and even resell your image in whatever manner they see fit. Concerned by this revelation, Dean turned to photographer/lawyer Bert Krages for clarification. Krages explained that this statement essentially gives Facebook the right to take all of those images of you and your friends and turn them into a giant stock image library to which you will have no rights or recompense even if they use your mugshot.
While that’s probably not the end of the world for all of those shots from random 21st birthday parties or bachelor party antics, it does create reason to pause for photographers considering using Facebook as a means of attracting new clients to their work. It should also raise a red flag for branded group pages: be careful what you’re throwing out there for your group members to drool over unless you don’t mind the work wandering elsewhere.
As a counterpoint, it appears that Flickr’s use of member photos is limited to promotional purposes, a practice that’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to online hosting/sharing sites.
My reaction overall? Shame on you Facebook. Seriously. Isn’t it enough that you’ve slapped more advertising in front of your millions of members? Or that your shameless issuing of branded “gifts” is getting worse? Or that you got a multi-billion dollar offer to buy part of your…whatever it is you think of as your assets. You start running around making money off member photos, I think you just might begin to see a backlash. Maybe.