Ownership of Facebook photos

DrPhil

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I was at a family wedding last week, and put some pictures on Facebook the next day.

I took a few really nice snaps of the couple as they had their first dance and was quite proud of them to be honest.

A day or so later I noticed the bride being "tagged" in someone else's pictures, and realised that 3 of the 20 or so pictures they had uploaded were mine. They had presumably downloaded mine and re-uploaded them.

The girl who "pinched" my pictures was one of the family so I didn't pay much notice. However today the bride shared a link to a local news/blog page who had a small article on the wedding. And there, proud as punch, is my photo again!

It's no big deal, and I have no intention of complaining to the first person, or the site owners. But I must admit that I'm a little unimpressed that my pictures are being ripped off far and wide.

Do I actually have any ownership of the picture or is it free for anyone to copy and reproduce as much as they like?

Like I say it isn't a huge deal and I'm not about to unleash the legal team, lol. I'm just curious about the rights and wrongs of it.
 
If its no big deal as you put it why are you questioning it and taking the time to write a post on here? if it was me I wouldn't care at all.
 
Its your photo, but you gave facebook a license to use it anyway they want. Which means appearing in other peoples newsfeeds according to the privacy settings you set. Regards other people downloading and using your photo, well, its in the public domain now, but I guess you could chase if you really wanted.

If you were a professional photographer, you wouldn't upload anything you didn't want freely used without some kind of water mark. You could probably contact the publication for credit, but to what end? They were alerted to a wedding and Facebook is as good a source as any to get a nice photo of the event, I'd be happy in the knowledge that yours stood out from the crowd..
 
I’d say the copyright remains with you. The newspaper might have got the photo via someone else and asked for their permission in error. Watermarks are the only way, but they can make the picture hard to see.
 
I'd be happy in the knowledge that yours stood out from the crowd..
I certainly am!

The bride posted a link to the site in question and I replied saying that I was proud they had used my photo.

The author of the article replied that it was the bride herself (my sister in law) who sent the picture to her. Can't get much higher praise than that.

I told the author that I was perfectly happy for it to be used and took it as a compliment that a few people had done so.
 
The last 2 weddings I've been too, guests have been told specifically not to post any photo's on social media without the consent of anyone in the picture, and under no circumstances post pictures of the bride or bridal party.
 
Under UK law the creator of something owns its copyright unless they explicitly give it away.

I haven't read Facebook's IP policy in a while, but technically its irrelevant in this case, but by uploading to Facebook you'll almost certainly have given THEM an unlimited license to do what THEY want with your photo which probably still includes reselling them.

That license however doesnt extend to other people and so a random person/your family member cannot lawfully simply take the image and do what they want with it. Whilst copyright law is more relaxed for the reporting of the news photos actually have full protection even in the news. It could also depend to some extent on if the news page has actually posted the item or if its some simple tagging type thing

Now technically you could pursue any of them, other than facebook, for breach of copyright (depending to some degree how it got to the news page) but to what end? Make them remove it? "Buy" the picture from you?

Depending on who what the local news page/blog is they may have gotten the bride to sign a doc confirming she had the right to upload them and provide indemnity to the news page and so any settlement they make gets repaid by her.

A former colleague was a part time photographer, back in those days (mid 00s) he did a fair few "model portfolio" shots for free or nominal payment and he kept the copyright and gave the model a limited rights license for use in their portfolio. More than a few of those shots made their way into Nuts, Zoo etc so he sent the publishers a bill of £1,000 an image and each got paid. He always joked he made more from the copyright breaches than he did from selling the images he sold himself.
 
Anything posted to Facebook has no ownership and is free for anyone to use.

False - but a very common misconception.

Just look at that woman that took a photo of all the royals at Christmas and put it on twitter, then it got spotted by the papers who bought it from her.

If you upload a photo to facebook you give them certain rights to do things with it, but it isn't 'theirs to sell'. They would be violating their own privacy rules for one thing - when you upload a photo you are very specific about who can see it (no-one, friends, friends-of-friends etc).
 
Terms of service

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:
  1. 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 unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
 
Rather than pinched were the photos just shared, which then makes that photo appear on that person's Facebook.
 
Rather than pinched were the photos just shared, which then makes that photo appear on that person's Facebook.
They didn't share my picture. Firstly one of the family uploaded an album. Most of the pictures were her own, which I could tell by the angle of the pictures of the ceremony for example. But 3 of the pictures were mine. She didn't share my pictures on her timeline, she saved my pictures and then uploaded them again.

The bride also saved and sent my picture to her friend, who then used it in her blog entry/article.
 
They didn't share my picture. Firstly one of the family uploaded an album. Most of the pictures were her own, which I could tell by the angle of the pictures of the ceremony for example. But 3 of the pictures were mine. She didn't share my pictures on her timeline, she saved my pictures and then uploaded them again.

The bride also saved and sent my picture to her friend, who then used it in her blog entry/article.

Issue a takedown order unless they acknowledge you :devil:
 
I only ever had one photograph published, by the Daily Telegraph iirc, they printed my name above it but I didn't get paid - my fault, I didn't pursue it.

It was a monochrome photo of a woman with a goat, in a dark shed in the Pyrenees, seeing as you asked. :eek:
 
I only ever had one photograph published, by the Daily Telegraph iirc, they printed my name above it but I didn't get paid - my fault, I didn't pursue it.

It was a monochrome photo of a woman with a goat, in a dark shed in the Pyrenees, seeing as you asked. :eek:


I'm glad I asked :p
 
False - but a very common misconception.

Just look at that woman that took a photo of all the royals at Christmas and put it on twitter, then it got spotted by the papers who bought it from her.

If you upload a photo to facebook you give them certain rights to do things with it, but it isn't 'theirs to sell'. They would be violating their own privacy rules for one thing - when you upload a photo you are very specific about who can see it (no-one, friends, friends-of-friends etc).

Terms of service

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:
  1. 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 unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

So I wasn’t far wrong then. Going by those terms of service, basically you have no control over photos posted.
 
So I wasn’t far wrong then. Going by those terms of service, basically you have no control over photos posted.

"You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings"

You still own the photos you post on Facebook.

Facebook is allowed to show them to people as defined by your settings, but you still own them.

So this

Anything posted to Facebook has no ownership and is free for anyone to use.

is false.
 
More than a few of those shots made their way into Nuts, Zoo etc.

Now I’m not a professional photographer, but if any of those “models” what me to take a few snaps of them, can you send them my way! I also won’t charge... ;)
 
"You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings"

You still own the photos you post on Facebook.

Facebook is allowed to show them to people as defined by your settings, but you still own them.

So this



is false.

Yes, technically that’s correct, but ownership with content such as photos on the internet is not black and white. Once there it can be shared, copied etc and nothing you can really do about it.
 
Now I’m not a professional photographer, but if any of those “models” what me to take a few snaps of them, can you send them my way! I also won’t charge... ;)
There was a website he used to use for aspiring photographers and models (plus a few makeup artists) with lots of both offering free services in exchange for images. I looked at it a couple of times, had a whole code on profiles of what level of nudity was acceptable etc; plus inevitably a sub forum for models only to report users who were just "man with camera" rather than an actual photographer. Can try and find it if you want :)
Facebook is allowed to show them to people as defined by your settings, but you still own them.
It goes much further than simply being able to show them to people as per:
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)
Transferable and sub-licensable means they can, subject to your privacy settings, sell the license you've given them to others if they want.

The second part of your post, as per my prior post, is fully correct though. These rights are only given to Facebook Inc and not all users of Facebook or anyone else that finds an indexed version of your images elsewhere.
 
I only ever had one photograph published, by the Daily Telegraph iirc, they printed my name above it but I didn't get paid - my fault, I didn't pursue it.

It was a monochrome photo of a woman with a goat, in a dark shed in the Pyrenees, seeing as you asked. :eek:

I've had about 70 published in various places in the past and made about 1500 quid (like mentioned above - a lot of that money was from copyright breaches than anything else) - as one photo appeared on the local news over a year after an event as there was some update on the story (there was an explosion near where I lived at the time) and i chased it up -I only got about 75 quid for the photo, but they gave me the runaround for a few months and told me lies saying it had been sent to the payments section (I investigated and called them - and they told me this was a lie, as once it got to their dept they would issue a payment within 48 hours)...
 

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