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by Someone1234 3820 days ago
No.

Photographs belong to the person who pressed the shutter release. The actual format or medium of the photograph (digital, print, negative, whatever) is irrelevant to the copyright, which is created during the act of taking a photograph.

So remember: Next time you hand someone your camera to take a picture of you, that person effectively owns the copyright on that image. Including a monkey[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie#Copyright_issues

PS - Although I'm sure you have to give them a license to your copyrighted photo so that they can display it back to you on their website. It is standard industry practice. Doesn't mean they have redistribution rights or own the copyright however.

1 comments

Is there theoretically anything preventing them from putting a line like this from insta's TOS in there?

"Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service, subject to the Service's Privacy Policy..."

Why does that text concern you?

If you want Instagram to display your photograph back to you (or other users at your request) then you have to grant them a license like this.

Where terms get concerning is when they want a redistribution license, or they want to allow unnamed third party "partners" to be able to utilise your photograph royalty free. Neither of which appear in the snippet above.

> Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content

Does "sub-licensable" not allow the "partners" you speak of?

Yeah, I probably could have found a better quote, but it's a random TOS and I'm at work haha. At the end of the day, I don't see a reason to believe why Kodak wouldn't make a play to control the images they scan/upload as much as possible. Or a reason to believe TOS wouldn't change to make that so once adoption of the new Super 8 is at an acceptable level to Kodak.
The sub-licenseable, and transferable parts.

That's pretty much "Screw you we can do what we want now".