[Mystalic]

I don't think Instagram/Systrom had any intention to sell user photos or do anything as drastic as the blogosphere made its TOS changes sound.

It did the right thing responding so quickly to user feedback. Hopefully it'll result in a TOS that lets Instagram monetize without infringing on the privacy of its users.

[jonknee]

> Hopefully it'll result in a TOS that lets Instagram monetize without infringing on the privacy of its users.

And maybe just maybe they will review further TOS changes before unleashing them. If these terms were really against Instagram's plans, it's almost even more pathetic.

[tharris0101]

I agree. There is a lot of attention paid to TOS changes lately. How could they not see that this would come with heavy backlash? I know he keeps saying "not our intention" in that post, but intentions don't amount to anything if the TOS clearly gives them carte blanche with your photos. Just some really bad public relations going on there.

[jobu]

Though they probably won't admit it, I'm betting Hanlon's Razor fits this situation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlons_razor)

After reading some of the TOS changes and this blog post it really seems like a case of overzealous lawyering - trying to cover Instagram for all possible uses of the photos.

[shabble]

I'd like to see a site/service along the lines of http://www.tldrlegal.com/ but which crowdfunded some decent lawyers to review the ToS, privacy policy, etc of popular sites (determined by user votes) and provided a list of potentially objectionable statements.

Not as Proper Noun Legal Advice, but more as a set of things which might be a concern, and you should have your own qualified legal counsel examine in detail if desired)

I can think of all sorts of problems though; malpractice, negligence, copyright infringement of ToS, libel for misinterpretations, and many more besides. Maybe that's why it doesn't (can't?) exist.

[mstefanko]

The blogosphere will always make things sound worse than they are. But was it really that exaggerated this time. I don't think there intentions were as bad as it came off, but they made a huge mistake. There response was honestly not all that fast considering the instant shit storm this caused. If a million users complain about something immediately after it hits the feeds, and it takes them literally hours to say much of anything about it, there's an issue. The apology was not heartfelt, it wasn't sincere, and came off far more like like, "we're sorry you didn't understand."

I think instagram/facebook should be able to monetize, but I think today marks a gigantic mistake in their history, they went down in myspace fashion. Users dropping like flies, the amount of traffic on services like instaport.me and http://freethephotos.com/ is phenemonal.

In other news, flickr came back from the grave.

[chmars]

The legal text, i.e., the announced new ToS, remain relevant, in particular since the ToS rule out suing Instagram (you have to revert to arbitration). I therefore see today's announcement as an important first step but an amendment to the announced new ToS has to follow suit if Instagram really takes this matter serious from a legal perspective.

[pdonis]

Hopefully it'll result in a TOS that lets Instagram monetize without infringing on the privacy of its users.

What I don't get is why Instagram doesn't just let users pay for the value they are obviously receiving from the service.

http://blog.peterdonis.com/opinions/your-cloud-data-not-your...