To photographers who post photos to Facebook…
This is sort of old news but as more and more photographers start creating Facebook groups or pages to promote themselves, I think it deserves mentioning. The main idea of this post is that if you use Facebook to promote yourself, do it in a way that drives traffic to your own website. Also, make sure your website is easy to use and look at.
Long story short, according to the user agreement, whenever you submit content to Facebook, you are granting them a license to do whatever they want with the images. Wired even did a story on people’s profile photos ending up in online ads. It all reminds me of when a band from Ottawa got their music used during a Super Bowl broadcast because they consented to this type of thing simply by posting their songs on MySpace.
Here’s the bit from the user agreement:
“…you automatically grant … an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise…”
Generally, I like what Facebook provides but I can’t stand behind the idea that an ad-supported, for-profit entity might use my images without working out a deal with me first.
Solution? Don’t post images or post only watermarked images. For a long time, I didn’t like watermarking but given the amount of uncredited photos that float around online, now, I’d almost prefer more images to be watermarked so that if I see one I like, I can at least know who took it and find more work by that same photographer. I mean, watermark or not, I don’t plan on printing enlargements from photos found on the Web… Does someone’s name or logo really deter from the work that much? Thoughts?
More info:
Facebook Terms of use
A Visual Society
Wired
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i wonder what happens to the ones i uploaded, I canceled my account last week
Comment by brian — October 21, 2008 #