Facebook's terms of service expressly state that by uploading any kind of content, whether in the form of photos or material, you are automatically assigning copyright control to Facebook. All photos you upload to Facebook therefore become the property of Facebook.
This means that Facebook can sell copies of photos posted by you without paying you any form of profit. Whenever you share photos with your Facebook friends you are giving up ownership of any intellectual property rights you may own in the photos you upload.
This applies whether or not you post the photos to a publicy accessible area of Facebook or not.
By posting photos to any area of the Facebook site you are granting an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive global licence, including the right to sub-licence, use, copy, publicly perform, reformat, translate, distribute and the right to make derivative works of the photos to Facebook. When you decide to remove the content that licence may not necessarily terminate and Facebook have the right to retain archived copies of material posted.
This is the reason some subscribers choose to upload smaller photos to Facebook, namely to deter people re-using them, as smaller photos will be of lower quality and grainy in appearance. However you need to remember that whenever you upload a full-sized photo you are granting Facebook the right to save a copy of the photo on their servers, which they are then free to modify and adapt.
If you still choose to upload your photos to Facebook, ensure that the images you upload are resized low resolution photos which to reduce the prospect of them being re-printed or re-used in ads. If you upload the original size photos, Facebook have the right to use your photos for any commercial purposes without giving you any credit or compensating you.
The only foolproof solution for those who do not want to lose control over their photos is not to upload them in the first place. People often post their photos to their blogs or to a photo sharing website such as Flickr to retain ownership of their photos. However, in reality once photos are posted on the internet and available for viewing by anyone, they are in the public domain.
Anything posted on publicly accessible areas of the internet becomes a public record. Determining what areas of the internet are public and what areas are private isn't straightforward. Having control over the ownership of the property in your photos won't necessarily guarantee that your photos will remain private once posted on the internet.
Whilst you can set your privacy settings on Facebook so only your friends can see photos you upload, there are numerous ways people can circumvent these protections. There is no guarantee that you can ensure the privacy of your photos on Facebook via the use of privacy settings.
It is safer to assume that whenever you post photos anywhere on the web people can acquire and use them for purposes which you would not consent to and which could be embarrassing and illegal. Photos are often be stolen on the internet and used for the purposes of identity theft or pornography without the subject and/or owner ever being aware.
If you wish to share photos on the internet it is preferable to use a secure private network in which content is encrypted and served using peer to peer technology. Whenever data is stored on a central server it is susceptible to being hacked.
Often photos are uploaded onto Facebook without the person uploading them even having lawful ownership of the copyright in the photos. It is naive to think that Facebook or other social networking sites have the time to check the copyright status of every image that is posted on their site or is copied and pasted from their site to another site on the internet.
Wherever photos you post on Facebook contain images of other persons, it is advisable to obtain a release from the subjects in the photographs. There are many situations where photos are posted on Facebook which are not the subject of copyright ownership by the person who posted them.
In order to have such photos removed a person must apply to Facebook or obtain a Court order. This may involve proving that the offending image infringes Facebook's terms of service or the common law.
Author Adele A Pace – For more information and resources on cyberlaw and ecommerce visit http://www.pacelegal.com.au.
Complete rubbish totally inaccurate and getting different parts of the law mixed up.Public domain?Nothing to do with copyright law.
@orson cart:
Check Google for 'copyright and public domain' and you'll see how wrong you are. Because you're very wrong indeed; public domain and copyright are very much related (and when copyright expires it actually goes to public domain!). It's why incidentally when I wanted to (as I have) not worry about copyright with different things of mine (as in anyone can use it in whatever way they wish) I decided to put them in the public domain. In public domain literally means it can be used by anyone without permission but nobody actually owns it. That directly contradicts your claim.
"Facebook's terms of service expressly state that by uploading any kind of content, whether in the form of photos or material, you are automatically assigning copyright control to Facebook."
Where does Facebook say that?
So, you mean to tell me that Facebook went through the trouble of giving you the option to set your photos as private, public, or visible to friends, yet they still go as far as using our photos for ads? Do we have any proof of such a thing?
Wow, so powerful, facebook, ive uploaded photos of all my artwork ive done in my whole life, i have no idea of the quality of the photos and i dont care what people do with my art, if they can sell it, good, at least someone is buying it( happy face)
I'd love it to tell me who views my videos! You can see who likes it and they can steal it but I can't see who views it. Please fix this. Facebook is getting worse by the day. Meme's everywhere. You should change the site to meme.com. I am thinking about removing my account due to just finding out anyone can STEAL my pics with no credit. Wrong. I'll make sure I post crap pics that Facebook won't want to steal. This is not cool. I used to like this site because I have relatives far but its getting bad. Thanks for stealing my pics. Wow
So,
Copyrighted media and intellectual property must have a new definition legally. As per Australian law, no entity, including fb can monopolise any publicly posted information without the owners explicit individually assigned permission.
Which conflicts this statement.
Deb Eversham………. who said FB can monopolize… FB says they can use it any way they want but doesn't state the owner can't do what s/he wants with the pic…. not monopolizing.
Quite a lot is wrong with this article. Facebook do not claim ownership of your photos. Once you delete the photos, Facebook's licence to use the photos expires. No one else but facebook is allowed to use your photos, and facebook can only use your photos as per the sharing and permissions you use. If you post a photo for friends only, facebook can't use that photo in an advertising campaign, for example. You retain ownership of the copyright of your photos.
If someone colies your photo, and uploads it to their own facebook profile, you can report it to facebook as copyright violation, and fscebook will remove it. I have had them do it for photos of mine that have been misappropriated by other facebook pages.
This is simply false. You just read some legal terms that you didn't understand and think that any image that was uploaded onto Facebook is now free game. This wouldn't hold up in court at all and tons of photographers are winning cases against a wide assortment of individuals and corporations for IP theft. Please speak with a competent lawyer about this then amend your article.
Next time , talk to a lawyer and read the terms and conditions properly . Not much is correct in this article .
This in untrue. You really need to remove this article!
There is nothing about posting photos online that inherently places them in the public domain.
You own the copyright to photos you take from the moment you take them. When you post them online through a third party website or social media platform, you agree to the terms of service of that website. Many major image-sharing websites have terms of service stating that you continue to own the copyright to photos you post, but you grant the website a license to copy or distribute them. This may be sublicensable, so that the service can give others permission to reblog, retweet, or otherwise share the photos. Other websites, such as Unsplash and Pixabay, are set up specifically for photographers who want to release their photos into the public domain. Therefore, by posting on these sites, you do agree to terms of service that place your photos in the public domain.
In addition, photos enter the public domain when the copyright term expires. For photos taken after January 1, 1978, the copyright term is the life of the author plus 70 years.
https://photocopyrightlaw.com/are-photos-posted-online-in-the-public-domain/
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