TechyDad

Why I Might Leave Instagram and How They Can Save The Situation

December 19, 2012 TechyDad Internet, Photography

I really like Instagram. It makes it easy to upload photos on the go, share them with all of my followers, and get social feedback via likes and comments. Unfortunately, recent events are leading a lot people to close their accounts. I’ve got to admit, I’m considering closing mine as well.

In a recent change to their Terms of Service, Instagram has declared that:

Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service, except that you can control who can view certain of your Content and activities on the Service as described in the Service’s Privacy Policy, available here: http://instagram.com/legal/privacy/.

Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you. If you are under the age of eighteen (18), or under any other applicable age of majority, you represent that at least one of your parents or legal guardians has also agreed to this provision (and the use of your name, likeness, username, and/or photos (along with any associated metadata)) on your behalf.

The "non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free" portion of the first part is pretty standard. This just means that when you upload a photo to Instagram, they can display it without worrying about you suing them. The next part is a little troubling though. "Transferable" and "sub-licensable" means that they can take the permission you’ve granted them and give it to someone else.

Alone, this might be worrisome, but wouldn’t lead to a mass exodus. The second part, however, means that Instagram could take the photos you are posting and the name you are posting under and sell them to a company to use in ads. Furthermore, the money that Instagram gets from the ads would remain with Instagram. They wouldn’t share it at all with the people who took and posted the photos.

History Repeats Itself

Two years ago, I was a happy TwitPic user. I would take photos with my phone and send them to TwitPic to be posted online. (I didn’t have a smartphone or data plan at this point.) Then, TwitPic changed their Terms of Service to give them the right to sell posted photos to third parties without sharing the revenues with the users who posted the photos.

Sound familiar?

There was an exodus from TwitPic as people switched to YFrog and other services. I, on the other hand, took a different route. I used a combination of WordPress plugins to create my own photo posting area on my blog.

This worked well until I got a smartphone and Instagram came to Android. These happened at about the same time and I was lured in. I didn’t play with filters, but I liked the ease of taking a photo and posting it. I also found that I liked the social feedback. Comments and likes were easily administered and displayed. So I began to use Instagram for all of my "on the go" photo postings.

Instagram’s Clarification

Now, Instagram had heard the uproar and has tried to clarify by saying "it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear." For the moment, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. The new TOS doesn’t take effect until early January so they have until then to change their Terms of Service.

If they don’t change it in a favorable manner, however, I’m going to leave. I don’t care if they say "we don’t plan on selling your photos" if their Terms of Service says "we can sell your photos any time we decide to do so."

How To Make This Into A Win

Now, I’m not going to begrudge Instagram making a profit. I know that it costs money to run the service and they need to recoup this somehow. And selling users’ photos is a clear path to revenue. But this was the wrong way to go about it. Were I to implement this, there would have been massive changes.

First of all, the service would be opt-in. Not a single photo would be sold unless a user first decided that they wanted their photos to be available to be sold. Secondly, marking your photos to be sold would just mean that you would get offers from companies. A company would find your posted photo, decide they’d like to use it, and would make an offer to you via a channel Instagram would provide. When the user and the company came to an agreement, Instagram would handle the payment. Instagram would take a cut and the user would get the rest. The company would then get the photo to use for the agreed upon purpose.

This system would allow photos to be monetized while still retaining user control over how their photos are used. If anything, it would make their system more useful and might lead more people to post there hoping that their photos would lead to an offer.

Has Instagram’s new Terms of Service made you consider closing down your Instagram account?

Note: The trash can icon above is by hrum and is available from OpenClipArt.org. I added the Instagram logo to it.

A Quick Stop at Gaston’s Tavern #NewFantasyland

December 18, 2012 TechyDad Disney, NewFantasyland

Yes, New Fantasyland has Belle, the Beast, Ariel, and more, but there’s someone else. A guy that’s admired above all others. A guy who awes and inspires. A guy whom all other guys would like to be, even when taking his lumps.

Of course, I’m speaking about Gaston.

Gaston might not have a castle, like Beast does, but he’s got a nice tavern in New Fantasyland.

In front, there’s a lovely fountain of Gaston and his number one supporter LeFou.

Of course, as Gaston would be quick to remind you, he uses antlers in all of his decorating.

Unfortunately, at the media event, we didn’t get to try Gaston’s food. We did get to sample his tavern’s signature drink: LeFou’s Brew. It’s a frozen apple juice drink with a hint of toasted marshmallow and topped with a passion fruit foam. I found this quite tasty. I could definitely see this cooling you down after a hot walk through New Fantasyland.

So if you find yourself in New Fantasyland, stop on by Gaston’s Tavern for a brew. If you’re lucky, Gaston himself might show up and grace you with his presence.

Disclosure: I was invited to the New Fantasyland media event December 5th through 7th. Disney paid for my travel, our park tickets, room, and a few other items. I was able to take B along as my guest, but we paid for her own travel as well as an extra night in the resort. The opinions expressed above are my own.

Hugs and Breaking Hearts

December 17, 2012 TechyDad Parenting

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that something horrific happened on Friday. Too many families went home that day without their precious children. As the news filtered out and we began to get a clearer picture of what happened, and as the death count rose, I began to get antsy at work. Web programming and answering e-mails didn’t seem important anymore. All I could think about was getting home to my kids to hug and kiss them.

When quitting time finally came, I couldn’t get home fast enough. I entered the door and rushed right in to my kids playing. I called them to me and gave them each a very big, very tight hug. They didn’t have any clue why, but at that moment all I wanted was to keep my kids safe and close to me.

We kept the news off while the kids were awake, but I had heard plenty before coming home. Once the boys were asleep, I couldn’t bear to listen to another news report. I can only take so much sad news. My heart was breaking for everyone involved. I spent the night decompressing by playing some video games and watching comedies.

On Sunday, we decided that the kids might hear something about the tragedy in school the next day. We didn’t want them hearing about it first from school so we told them some of what happened. We told them that something bad happened and many people died. We said that this has made us (and many other people) very sad.

So far, we don’t plan on telling them more. As parents, we want to shield them from the horrific truth. We want to protect their innocence and spare them the anxiety of wondering when their lives will be invaded by terror. We can only do that so much, though. The "real world" will intervene, so it is up to us to filter the information into a form that our kids can more easily understand.

Let’s just hope and pray that we never again need to shield our kids from a horror like this.

Aloha Friday: Test Track Power vs. Fuel Efficiency

December 14, 2012 TechyDad Aloha Friday, Disney

On the new version of Test Track at Disney World’s Epcot, you get to design your own car from the ground up and then see how it handles the testing course. In building your car, you need to balance four factors: Capability, Efficiency, Responsiveness, and Power. As you choose items, you might increase one section but decrease another.

When I built my car, I wound up pushing up the power section above all else. Plasma engine? Sure. Side and rear rocket boosters? Yes, please. Top electrical box that sort of reminded me of a flux capacitor? Ok, that one wasn’t for the power as much as the geek factor.

In the end, I came up with this vehicle:

My car wound up coming in first in all of the Test Track courses. Except for the environmental test. It came dead last there.

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Would you design your Test Track car for Capability, Efficiency, Responsiveness, or Power?

P.S. If you haven’t already, try out my Twitter applications: FollowerHQ and Rout.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #168

Copyright and Google

Google is a great tool. With it, you can look up virtually any information and find it rapidly. Thanks to Google Image Search, you can easily look through millions of photos, drawings, and more. Unfortunately, this also means that copyright infringement is all too easy and people get confused as to what constitutes fair use.

You might not know the story of Cora. Cora was only five days old when she died in her mother’s arms. Cora’s mother, Kristine, has tirelessly worked to raise awareness of congenital heart disease. There are many children alive today because of Kristine’s efforts.

In another corner of the Internet, there was a person who wanted to bring to light stories of babies who died due to child abuse. A laudable goal, I must admit. However, this person couldn’t find photos of all of the babies. Instead of making a generic "no photo available" image, she took some photos of babies from the Internet and used those. One of those photos was Cora’s.

Obviously, when Kristine found out she was upset. She asked the page owner to take the images down, pointing out that they are copyrighted. The page owner replied that images that appear in Google listings are free for anyone to use. While, she took Cora’s image down, she is still using other babies’ photos. In addition, she is calling Kristine and her supporters (including parents whose babies’ photos appear on the page) trolls for pressuring her to take down the photos..

Sadly, this isn’t the first time and likely won’t be the last time that someone mistakes "uploaded to the Internet" with "free for anyone to use." Unless otherwise noted, items uploaded to the Internet are copyrighted. This includes results from Google Images. Google indexes the images (unless the site specifies for Google not to) and presents them in an easy to find manner, but it doesn’t grant permission to use them. This is similar to how Google can let you search for a blog post, but it doesn’t grant you the right to take the text and put it on your website.

Now, there are some exceptions. There are some times when you can use an image and be safe from copyright infringement. The first of these is news reporting. If I was putting together a news report about Cora, I could legitimately use an image from the site. It would be better to ask for permission first, of course, but it wouldn’t be required. The other instance is parody. When Weird Al Yankovic takes a song and makes his own version, he doesn’t need to ask permission. He does (just like with news reporting, asking is nicer), but he isn’t required to.

However, using an image from a site just because that happens to match up with a blog post you’re making or because the website you’re putting together would look a little nicer if you grabbed that graphic? Not allowed. That’s copyright infringement.

Perhaps you are thinking that copyright infringement isn’t that big of a deal. After all, you can just grab the image, use it, and take it down if someone complains. The problem with this is that the penalties for copyright infringement are $750 to $150,000 per infringement. Taking the image down isn’t a protection. You still infringed when you used the image without permission.

I don’t know how many times Cora’s image was used on the infringing site. Kristina used the term "several", so let’s say it was used five times. In that case, the page owner could be sued for anywhere from $3,750 to $750,000. Add in time and money spent defending a court case and you need to ask yourself if grabbing that image worth a few thousand dollars’ risk.

So where should you get images if not from Google? After all, you can’t be expected to go out and photograph every possible scenario, right? Well, photographing your own is the best option, of course. Failing that, there are plenty of outlets, such as ShutterStock.com, where you can buy images to use on your websites. (NOTE: I have no relationship with ShutterStock. They were merely the first listing in my Google search for "Royalty Free Stock Images.")

If your budget is $0, though, there are still options. You might have noticed that my blog posts often credit OpenClipArt or Wikimedia Commons. Both provide public domain images that you can use or copyrighted images that grant you the right to reuse them freely. With these, though, make sure you credit the author/source. Even if it isn’t required, it is nice. In the case of the page owner who used Cora’s image, this image of a crying baby by labc and available for free from OpenClipArt.com would have been appropriate and free of any copyright entanglements.

So the next time you see an image in a Google Images search and think "that would go great on my blog post or website", please stop and think again. Don’t use copyrighted images unless you have the permission of the copyright owners. Use your own photos, paid stock images, or free images from sites like OpenClipArt or Wikimedia Commons that specifically allow usage. If you absolutely must use the copyrighted photo, ask for permission first. Depending on the purpose of your usage, the owner may grant permission. This is one time when it is better to ask permission than to seek forgiveness.

NOTE: The "copyright search" image above was created by Xander and comes from Wikimedia Commons under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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