Copyrights – Do You Own Your Pictures?
By Patrick Arseneau – A lot of people assume that they are the rightful owners of every picture they took. This is usually true up until they share those pictures on social websites or photo contests. When sharing pictures online, you should always pay close attention to the site’s terms and conditions. While most of them are being fair to the creator, some are a little surprising.
Social Websites
Back in February of 2009, Facebook changed it’s terms and conditions (yes, they have the right to do that) and they stated that all images posted on the site would become Facebook’s property forever even after the pictures are removed by the users. This change triggered a lot of angry users to protest and Facebook decided shortly after to make a few changes. Nonetheless, every facebook user should read the terms before posting their pictures:
Date of Last Revision: May 1, 2009
- Sharing Your Content and InformationYou own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how we share your content through your privacy and application settings. In order for us to use certain types of content and provide you with Facebook, you agree to the following:
- For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: 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 (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account (except to the extent your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it).
- When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).
- We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about Facebook, but you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them).
Don’t panic just yet. That doesn’t mean all your pictures are being sold to magazine companies in Europe. Besides, the pictures posted on Facebook are reduced to a very small resolution and they are barely printable.
Photo Contests
All photo contests have a terms section that is available to the users. Most of them will state that the user retains full creative rights with some minor freedom for the contest organizer (usually something small for simple contest promotion).
In 2006, Nikon was put in the spotlight and made headline news for sponsoring a “rights-grabbing” competition. The contest terms asked photographers to submit they pictures with full license and no expiry. Nikon didn’t expect to have so much negative attention and decided to modify the terms to match those of popular contests who use the images only for promoting the competition.
Small Prints
Don’t feel bad for not reading the terms and conditions every time you sign up to something. Personally I only read a very small percentage of them. 
Even when I do, I just look for key points. What I recommend is to weight the value of your work and compare it with the reward you get from posting the picture. If you think your picture could be worth a couple hundred dollars in a frame, or maybe it could be sold numerous times on stock photography sites, then maybe it’s not worth posting on a social contest for bragging rights.
Pro Imaging (www.pro-imaging.org) is a site that looks at the terms and conditions of various competitions in depth, rating them as good or bad. They also have a ton of information about photographer rights.
