Say Cheese

Thanks to advances in cellphones, these days pretty much everyone has a camera in their pocket at all times. They come in awfully handy when random news occurs but mostly these cameras are used for more important issues, such as when people want to get their friends' advice about an outfit or simply don't feel like typing a long text message to explain something funny which is happening. Despite this convenience, I still don't take that many pictures as I go through my daily routine, which also means I don't share many pictures either. I get too many random visitors on my blog to share personal pictures with the world, but I recognize that not everyone is uptight about that kind of thing as I am. The good news is that you wanted your photos to be seen by as many people as possible, Instagram was planning to help you out. Hidden in their latest terms and conditions agreement appeared to be a clause which allowed the company to use or sell any photo uploaded to the site without telling the photographer or giving them any compensation. They could have done something as innocuous as putting your picture on the front page of their site or as underhanded as selling the picture for a multi-million dollar ad campaign, all without asking you were comfortable with being the new face of a Russian jeans company. For their part Instagram quickly backed away from this, saying while it may have been worded it that, it was never their intention to sell private photos. I actually think their intention was not to get caught selling private photos.

Surprisingly, I don't have much sympathy for people whose pictures were potentially getting sold through Instagram. After all, it is a free site - they need to make their money somewhere. No one creates the next big internet sensation just out of the kindness of their heart. Also I do question if this is one of those things people were freaking out about even though it wouldn't apply to 95% of their users. Instagram appeared to be focused on getting famous photographers to use their site so they were probably the people they had in mind when their lawyers wrote this section of the agreement. It is the same thing which happened when the full-body scanners were first being placed in airports. I always noticed that the people complaining the loudest about how they didn't want their naked pictures to end up on the internet were always the people no one would want to see naked anyway. The other thing about which makes this story feel like people are complaining a little too much is that from what I can tell most Instagram pictures feature what people are having for dinner. Restaurants pay a lot of money to have professional make their food look really good. I don't care how great a picture your iPhone takes, there is no way McDonald's would risk using a picture which makes their burgers look greasy just to save a few advertising bucks. I'm not saying it is right that Instagram appeared to be trying to use personal photos in a public fashion, I'm just saying that most of you don't have to act like they were coming exclusively for your album.

Fortunately for the general public who were largely unaware there were at least a few people who were bored enough to actually read the entire terms of service agreement rather than doing what the rest of us do most of the time which is blindly sign it. I admit to being as guilty of this as the next guy - there is no way I want to read through 25 pages of legalese just to download a song, which again brings up the question of why these online agreements are so damn long. After all, if you think about what is really at stake, do we need that lengthy of a document? As I said in one of my first posts on this blog the Declaration of Independence was one page (single spaced, but still one page). If something that important can be taken care of in that few words, why all the paperwork when all I'm looking for is a place to post a picture of a funny t-shirt so all my friends can see it? I can't help but wonder if these agreements are written this way with just this sort of occasion in mind. If you keep producing longer and longer documents with no questionable material in them eventually people are going to let their guard down, trust you and just sign them. That is when you can sneak in whatever bizarre clauses you may want. A few years ago "South Park" had an episode which covered this very topic and featured Apple putting all sorts of strange clauses in their iTunes agreement. I would like to think that spurred a few more people to read these documents. (Score another one for Matt and Trey.)

Of course because this happened on the internet in 2012, for every person who was pissed off about this terrible invasion of privacy there were three people who thought this was going to launch them to fame and fortune, either as a model or a famous photojournalist. Other people didn't care which pictures Instagram sold or to whom as long as they fixed the part about not paying the person who originally took the picture. And to me that is the real heart of this matter - people say they don't like it when companies take their personal information without telling them, but they really don't like it when those companies don't pay them. Some tech experts are saying this could be the end of Instagram since they look deceitful and there are plenty of other photo-sharing websites to choose from. I think this is a much easier fix for Instagram - give people a button which allows them to pick and choose which of their pictures they would be willing to sell to advertisers and then give those users a small fee. It probably doesn't even have to be that much money considering people were going to take these pictures anyway. If anything the chance to make a little money that way is pretty much every internet user's dream. Not only would it stop Instagram's current public relations problems, but it may even increase the number of users and the quality of the pictures on the site. I just hope this incident will remind people that just because a company came up with a cool idea and seems like it is run by fun people, that doesn't mean they won't try to sneak something passed you as soon as they can. After all, buying friends can be easier than making them.