Everyone knows that the Mayans may or may not have predicted
that the world will end on December 21, 2012. Experts are now saying that
there is another
major calamity awaiting right around the corner for those of us who survive
on January 16, 2013. That's when Instagram's new privacy policy will take
effect.
There are a number of reasons why this isn't the end of the
world.
The
EFF is claiming that by including language in the "Rights"
section of Instagram’s new
Terms of Use, Instagram will now be able to sell your photos to other
companies. This is an accurate reading of the terms
"transferable" and "sub-licensable" that are added to the
license you grant Instagram in order for them to display their photos on the
site. This reading, however, discounts the rest of that sentence which
says the photos you post are still restricted to whatever privacy settings you
already have in place and that the use must comply with Instagram's
privacy policy.
There will probably be herds of Zombies after the Mayan
Apocalypse walking around with their smartphones, wondering if an equally
undead corporation might use their pictures of brains for their own purposes.
Like when Virgin Mobile of Australia took pictures from
a 16 year old’s Flickr stream to use on bus stops for its wireless phone
marketing campaign. It has happened, and that scenario is not
allowed by Flickr’s current Terms of Use…so there aren’t any guarantees even if
the Terms of Use are perfect.
There is also another explanation for Instagram’s
change. The privacy policy has certain limited uses for what Instagram is
allowed to do with your content. In addition to requiring that they
respect your privacy settings, the privacy policy says that in case of a
merger, the content you upload might be a part of what is transferred to the
new company. The Terms of Use "transfer" language is very
common in software contracts and is typically used to protect in the event the
company is sold or acquired so that their customers can't run away kicking and
screaming.
Is Facebook considering selling off Instagram? Maybe
they just want to have their options open if the world does come to an end on
Friday?
Perhaps they need the language in order to do what Facebook
is already doing when they let you "Like" news articles and other
pages on sites outside of Facebook. (Please feel free to "like" and/or "share"
this article.) Or maybe they have a new feature or product up their
sleeve that necessitated a change.
Or it could be that Facebook is just bringing Instagram's
Terms of Use into line with Facebook's
existing policy that uses the same "transferrable" and
"sub-licensable" language. That’s probably it.
