Facebook Image Rights...

In recent weeks, it has increasingly come to my attention that photographers are working themselves into a frenzy about the rights controversy concerned with uploading material to Facebook. Some refuse to upload images; others have turned away from Facebook altogether. I suppose this is responsible enough, as we shall see. What encouraged me to look into the matter, however, was hearing of an extreme case of a photographer emailing a client, threatening legal action if they uploaded an image to Facebook that the client had actually purchased. Let’s have a look and see how justified that actually is.

The issue with Facebook is – and do pause for a quick yawn here, I did - clause 2.1 in their Terms & Conditions:

‘For content that is covered by intellectual property rights… photos and videos ("IP content"), you… grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook. This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account…’

The howling turds, you cry. A sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use photographs? Pshaw! Well, I mean, fair’s fair, but that’s just silly…

No, it isn’t a fair agreement. Yes, there is a strong case for crying foul and being protective of one’s intellectual property. It would be ridiculous to so much as attempt to defend such a one-sided clause, even if I were an employee of Facebook, but especially as a photographer myself.

The thing that makes me wonder, though, is that I am not actually aware of a single case of Facebook using a photograph under this clause. I could have missed something, but from here it does look like a bit of a storm in a teacup. Mark Zuckerberg has explained that Facebook ‘need certain licenses in order to facilitate the sharing of content through our service’ – and in the absence of any evidence to suggest that the clause is any more nefarious than that, I for one am prepared to believe him. Photographers seem to be spending more time than can possibly be healthy, worrying about the clause. It turns up in conversations and blogs and has even featured on the radio recently. It’s good that attention is being brought to the issue, but surely there is no need to go overboard.

Which brings us back to our litigious photographer, my inspiration for this piece, whose failure to understand this matter appears to have cost him a client. Whatever may happen in the future with this clause, he appears to be more of a threat to his own business than Facebook is.

For what it’s worth, my message to any photographer would be as follows: Don’t avoid Facebook because of its rights policy. Avoid it because it reduces your images to a poor quality, pixellated mush.