Instagram updates its Terms of Service again based on user feedback
blog.instagram.com
blog.instagram.com
In the days since, it became clear that we failed to
fulfill what I consider one of our most important
responsibilities – to communicate our intentions clearly.
But, to be honest, I don't know what else they could have said or done. They probably shouldn't be fully transparent and say "we tried a way to shear the sheep and the sheep did overreact, let's try another way".
This could be followed with a brief account of how they actually see advertising working on the site (hopefully it's not stupid or creepy), making a retraction of the bad terms, and saying that they'll be revising the terms to support this direction and this direction only.
Finally, they may want to acknowledge that users have every right to value their IP highly, and that Instagram knows that while their service is popular, it doesn't justify the kind of liberties that the bad TOS was taking with IP that isn't Instagram's in the first place, and what they're really focused on is a trade that everyone sees as fair. They can add that they appreciate people's patience as they take the time to get the exchange right.
1. Gross overreach of TOS. 2. User Outrage. 3. Faux apology.
It's not that surprising that they act so similar to FB when FB did pay 1B for it.
The license is not really the place to explain intentions except where they place limits on rights but to define who has what rights. A blog post or a preamble about how the rights they receive will be used is more reasonable for that.
The other thing that's disappointing about instagram is that they want to get into the creepy 'social' side of the advertising at all. I would've loved them for offering an affordable subscription that gave you power user features like what flickr offers, and promising to stay the hell away from manipulating my social relationships for profit.
Instagram's pitch before their users came in-
"Hey we're a free photo enhancing service, come and join us, we don't sell your photos"
Instagram's mindset after they got their users -
"You know what? We need to make some quick cash. We're going to claim all your photos as ours and we are going to give ourselves the right to do whatever the shit we want to do with it, even re-sell it."
Some questions:
If you had intentions to make money, it's perfectly understandable. But who gives you the right to re-sell our content? You never told us that you're a stock photo site when we joined you and you had intentions to re-sell our content, You're luring users to join your service under the guise of 'FREE' while you have malicious intentions inside you.
Now we know what this unethical company is capable of, I am never going to rejoin their service, no matter what their TOS says. Because fuck you, that's why.
* Product (or Sales) will ask if they have the right to do something (now or in the future). No one is sure, and the issue is eventually bounced to Legal.
* Legal eventually tells them that the answer is no (or that it's unclear), and that the Terms will have to be edited to give 100% permission.
* Legal then goes ahead and proposes edits to the terms or privacy policy. Because they are lawyers, they focus on giving the website the absolute broadest possible permission. At no point is the Marketing or Communications team informed or consulted.
* Legal then coordinates with Product, and the changes are rolled out at the same time as (or shortly before) the product changes go live.
Then either users simply don't care, or they do and then this happens:
* Users spot the changes and freak out.
* The Marketing and Communications freak out as well, and hear about the changes (often for the first time).
* The Terms of Use are revised again, so that they more clearly communicate their original intent. Users either decide they still trust you, or they decide that the trust has been breached and look for alternatives.
I have seen this happen again and again. Very rarely is the website actively trying to screw their users. Much much more often, the real culprit is a lack of communication between the Legal and PR/Communications team.
It is absolutely critical that your General Counsel be on good terms with your head of PR (and that your head of PR/Comm is friendly with your head of Product). If that's the case, then these issues tend not to crop up. If not, then they tend to explode very publicly and violently on the entire company.
The #1 thing you can do to avoid these issues is to treat edits to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use as a major communications effort, and make sure that all changes are vetted with an internal advocate for your users (ideally, your Comm team is led by such a person). Otherwise, you could be headed for a blowup very similar to this one.
However, for a service like Instagram, the ToS are a critical part of the business. Any changes made to the terms should be known, understood, and agreed on by whoever sets the overall strategy for the product. The legal team helps them encode it, marketing and PR help them communicate it outwards, but the strategy should be coming from the top, and the responsibility should rest there.
That's actually the sort of compartmentalization that creates these problems. "Whoever sets the overall strategy for the product" = the head of Product or the Product Manager for a specific feature. This person rarely has any legal or communications experience. If the legal team's job is just to "encode" what product wants, then that's actually where the problem starts.
The only real solution here is for Product, Legal and Communications to work together from the beginning. The product feature should be designed with Legal and Comm concerns in mind. Otherwise, the danger is that you'll end up exposed to exactly the sort of snafu that Instagram experienced here.
But it seems to me that if this was happening at even a basic level, then whoever is in charge of the product at Instagram must have known they were adding some pretty onerous terms. And if they didn't, it's a pretty massive failure to take the ToS seriously.
Neither option inspires confidence in a service that people provide with important data.
Isn't this essentially what they were claiming in the previous version of the new TOS, expect this time it's not in your face that they can charge others (including advertisers) to use you images and not pay you?
"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"
The previous TOS said the following:
"Instagram does NOT claim ANY ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") that you post on or through the Instagram Services"
>With respect to Content you elect to post for inclusion in publicly accessible areas of Yahoo! Groups or that consists of photos or other graphics you elect to post to any other publicly accessible area of the Services, you grant Yahoo! a world-wide, royalty free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish such Content on the Services solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting the specific Yahoo! Group to which such Content was submitted, or, in the case of photos or graphics, solely for the purpose for which such photo or graphic was submitted to the Services. This licence exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Services and shall be terminated at the time you delete such Content from the Services.
"Instagram does NOT claim ANY ownership rights in the text, files, images,
photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or
any other materials (collectively, "Content") that you post on or through the
Instagram Services"
"By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the
Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid
and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add
to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content,
including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any
media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly
("private") will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services."
They're not so cool now, are they?
It was obviously going to 'go south' with the FB acquisition, though.
This sounds like informed consent... where have I heard that before... oh right the Privacy regulations everywhere http://www.ftc.gov/reports/privacy3/fairinfo.shtm
I know Instagram is built on people not looking at degraded pictures more than once, but do they think folks won't read and re-read these updates. I'm out. Back to Flickr.
Such a thing exists. http://theopenphotoproject.org/
I have it setup with my own Amazon S3 bucket and it's pretty neat so far.
They don't have an official Android app yet, but in true open-source fashion, they have an alpha version available on Github. https://github.com/photo/mobile-android/OpenPhoto-Android-Ap...
Yet look at the new terms - "transferable sub-licensable worldwide license" - yes present in the new terms too. So what makes this turd any different?
"Except if you opt-out or for … 'Excluded Disputes' …, you agree that all disputes between you and Instagram (whether or not such dispute involves a third party) with regard to your relationship with Instagram, including without limitation disputes related to these Terms of Use, your use of the Service, and/or rights of privacy and/or publicity, will be resolved by binding, individual arbitration …"
So if you fail to opt out of binding arbitration and they do go ahead and use your likeness in ads without your permission, you don't get to sue.
Classy.
So they have come out directly and said they don't have a way to make money then?
The operative portion being sub-licensable.