Twitter can make the content available to other companies that it has a partnership with, but nothing I have read indicates that it had a partnership with AFP.

From the twitpic Terms: “By uploading your photos to Twitpic you give Twitpic permission to use or distribute your photos on Twitpic.com or affiliated sites. All images uploaded are copyright © their respective owners.”

I totally agree that if Twitter had given the photos to AFP to distribute or had some kind of relationship, the Terms would be in play (as they are when images go from Twitpic to Twitter). But it is my understanding that this is not what happened here.

The suit is not against Twitter, it is against a party that is not part of the agreement between Twitter and Morel, a party that is not implicated in their agreement in any way.

I have granted some publications that I work with the right to sublicense and re-distribute (a debate for another day), but that does not give someone else the right to use the photos from that agreement without either their permission or my permission.

I think this is a general flaw with the way many media companies view facebook, twitter and youtube. It is a free-for-all for the beneficiaries of the terms of service, but not a free-for-all for the entire world, unless the TOS says that.

I am interested to hear what you think about my perspective. I know I am late to this party, but I had law school finals so I glossed over much of this.

-Alicia Calzada

Wow! I guess I was gravely mistaken as well. I didn’t realize the Twitter TOS applied to all images that were accessed by a link on Twitter. So if I, say, update a portfolio on my portfolio site and then link to the site from twitter, does twitter then have the rights to all the images on my portfolio site?

Leah

I don’t know all the details here but it really doesn’t matter in the big picture. My point is simply that so often photographers (and others, to be sure) use software or new services without reading the TOS and that is very dangerous. If there is any question, don’t use the service. Find another way. PITA? Often, yes, but it as the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

For everyone else, a friendly reminder: I do not approve anonymous comments. You have to come out, at least to me privately. Anonymity breeds sniping and trolls– something up with which I will not put.
-Leslie

The quote: “By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us…”

All the photographer posted on Twitter was a URL. A plain text URL. Anyone using Twitter’s services would only see the URL. No photo at all. So Twitter should be able to republish and relicense the URL any way they like that’s consistent with their ToS. The photographer didn’t actually post a photo on Twitter. It’s not even possible to post a photo on Twitter. Only text. Like a URL.

He posted the photo on Twitpic. That’s whose ToS we should be looking at. Twitpic’s ToS do say “By uploading your photos to Twitpic you give Twitpic permission to use or distribute your photos on Twitpic.com or affiliated sites” but I don’t see a list of affiliated sites.

People post links on Twitter all the time without the right to license the content found on those links. Does Twitter claim the right to use content on the whole web, just because someone linked to it on Twitter?

Does Twitter claim that if I post a link to my website, they can distribute the photos from my site? Of course not. But they can republish the tweet I wrote on their service in which I link to my site. That’s what their ToS covers.

As I read it.

However, if a photographer was willing to sacrifice an image to use, essentially, as advertising on a service like Twitter, knowing that the image could be taken and used by pretty much anyone and thus rendering its commercial value to 0 for the photog, and marking the image with, say, the photog’s URL, then that could be a tool to drive someone to look at the work on your site and then, possibly, to hire you/license other images.

Maybe.

-Leslie

When an artist tries to share his/her art even without pay, somehow they get the shaft; contests, social media outlets and even one’s own webpage. I had something kinda sorta similar and the AP has run one of my pictures with several articles- yet won’t acknowledge my existence. Yet the image was one time use only!

Dan