Is this how it's normally done!?

[Gavjenks]

In order to redress these injuries, Plaintiff, on behalf
of herself and the Class
defined herein, brings suit under the Telephone Consumer Pr
otection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227,
et
seq.
(“Telephone Consumer Protection Act” or “TCPA&#8221, which
prohibits unsolicited voice and
text calls to cell phones.

That court case is about facebook violating an anti-phone solicitation law, designed to stop telemarketers from harassing people.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with copyrights.

edit: In fact, the term "copyright" does not appear anywhere in the document, even incidentally, nor does "license" or "content."

 

[Ballistics]

In order to redress these injuries, Plaintiff, on behalf
of herself and the Class
defined herein, brings suit under the Telephone Consumer Pr
otection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227,
et
seq.
(“Telephone Consumer Protection Act” or “TCPA&#8221, which
prohibits unsolicited voice and
text calls to cell phones.

That court case is about facebook violating an anti-phone solicitation law, designed to stop telemarketers from harassing people.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with copyrights.

edit: In fact, the term "copyright" does not appear anywhere in the document, even incidentally, nor does "license" or "content."

Yeah... and no one said that it had anything to do with copyright. Have a good one.

 

[Gavjenks]

So.... in response to me saying what facebook could do with copyrights based on their terms of service, you intentionally brought up a case that neither has to do with copyrights, nor has to do with anything mentioned in their terms of service?

Also, the case hasn't even been heard yet. The document you linked me is from like... 2 weeks ago, and it's the plaintiff's allegations to a grand jury merely arguing that a jury trial is required. A hearing is currently scheduled for 6/20/2013.

Thus

1) This wasn't relevant to the discussion, because facebook never claimed in its ToS to be immune to telemarketer laws. In fact, they explicitly say that the ToS doesn't cover anything otherwise illegal. And...

2) You weren't correct about the details anyway. She wasn't awarded $1500 per text, because the case hasn't even happened yet. Nor did she even ask for $1500 (it's ambiguous which one you meant, but neither is true. The number 1500 does not appear anywhere). She didn't ask for any money, because the plaintiff is asking for a trial by jury, not for a summary ruling for X amount of money.

Perhaps you were confusing this case with this one? Florida woman sues Regions Bank over unwanted cell phone texts | al.com
Where a woman sued a BANK for $1500 per unsolicited text? It's the only thing that seems to match your details. It also seems to have not gone to court yet, as far as I can tell.

 

[Buckster]

FB's terms are written to allow it to have the things you post, including your photos, propagated to multiple servers around the planet so that the social network can function as intended. In distributing those photos to those multiple servers, it is copying the file, which would normally be illegal under copyright law. You are granting them permission to do that.

It's the same with all such multi-server online sites that do that sort of thing, and every time, some armchair lawyer jumps up and down and wigging out about how they're stealing copyrights and images and so on.

 

[Gavjenks]

1) If facebook is merely copying files from one of its servers to another, then they can do so all under the umbrella of their own original license, because they own all those servers.

Nothing about that would require either "sublicensing" or "transfer" of licenses. So why do they include those terms in the ToS, if all they want to do is propagate images across servers?

2) Even if that is their CURRENT intention, the license as worded still also covers the possible FUTURE intention of stealing your images and selling them for profit out from under you. Why trust a corporation to be kindhearted and risk that potential change of heart, when there are plenty of photo sharing alternative websites that do not include any such language and thus much less risk? (somehow Flickr magically seems to be able to keep its servers running just fine without claiming an unlimited, transferable, sublicensable license on my images. Imagine that.)

 

[Buckster]

Get back to us when you have a law degree specializing in copyright infringement.

 

[Gavjenks]

Get back to us when you have a law degree specializing in copyright infringement.

Do you have one? If not, then why did you write out an entire post offering your 2 cents on copyright infringement law interpretation, when you are of the opinion that only lawyers should discuss such things? Give me a break.


If so, then congratulations (seriously). But regardless, I don't need a law degree to compare two terms of service side by side and see obvious differences that allow half a dozen loopholes for one and not for the other. The relevant portion of Flickr's ToS (which was way better as of a month ago, but is still vastly better than FB):

b. With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Yahoo! Services other than Yahoo! Groups, [you grant us] the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Yahoo! Services solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Yahoo! Services and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Yahoo! Services.

Several things worth noting:

1) Nowhere does it say anything about transferring or sub licensing the license. This is because neither of these things makes any sense for simply running a photo sharing service. If they were, why has Yahoo not been repeatedly sued for copyright infringement for moving stuff between servers? Clearly, the "for the purpose it was submitted" covers the movement of content between servers, without overstepping their bounds with UNNECESSARY additional terms like being able to transfer the license to third parties. Facebook throws in these extra terms for no apparent reason that is in my interest.

2) The ToS explicitly restricts itself to actions that promote the same purpose for which you submitted the content originally. Yahoo making a bunch of money from under me off by selling my images to third parties would obviously not be an action made for the purpose that I submitted the content. Facebook places no such restrictions on itself. Hmm.

3) Note that Yahoo/Flickr states that their license will expire when I remove my content. Period. And since the license is not transferable or sub-licensable, they couldn't have given it to anybody else in the meantime. So that means that the one and only copy of that license ceases to exist when I delete my content. Nor do they add in any sneaky little "buts" like "but not if somebody else decided to share your content and still hasn't deleted it!" no no no. I delete it. The end. They no longer have the license. This puts the responsibility on THEM to go root out any copies of the image they have and purge them from any further display or distribution, etc. lest they face legal consequences. Facebook on the other hand, leaves itself an unenforceable loophole so that it never ever has to give up its license, no matter WHAT I do, if it doesn't feel like it.

 

[Ballistics]

So.... in response to me saying what facebook could do with copyrights based on their terms of service, you intentionally brought up a case that neither has to do with copyrights, nor has to do with anything mentioned in their terms of service?

Also, the case hasn't even been heard yet. The document you linked me is from like... 2 weeks ago, and it's the plaintiff's allegations to a grand jury merely arguing that a jury trial is required. A hearing is currently scheduled for 6/20/2013.

Thus

1) This wasn't relevant to the discussion, because facebook never claimed in its ToS to be immune to telemarketer laws. In fact, they explicitly say that the ToS doesn't cover anything otherwise illegal. And...

2) You weren't correct about the details anyway. She wasn't awarded $1500 per text, because the case hasn't even happened yet. Nor did she even ask for $1500 (it's ambiguous which one you meant, but neither is true. The number 1500 does not appear anywhere). She didn't ask for any money, because the plaintiff is asking for a trial by jury, not for a summary ruling for X amount of money.

Perhaps you were confusing this case with this one? Florida woman sues Regions Bank over unwanted cell phone texts | al.com
Where a woman sued a BANK for $1500 per unsolicited text? It's the only thing that seems to match your details. It also seems to have not gone to court yet, as far as I can tell.

I know I said I wouldn't post, but I need to say this:

You can't read for effin sh*t. I never said she was awarded anything. I said $1500 per text. I said $1500 per text because that's the maximum damages allowed per text due to the Telephone Protection Consumer Act.

MediaPost Publications Facebook Sued For Sending SMS Message To User 05/10/2013 I can't find the original article that I read for how much she sued for, but here it even states that the act allows up to $1500.

Me bringing up this lawsuit was relevant to the fact that I mentioned that ToS can say what ever it wants but it still doesn't save anyone from a lawsuit, and it definitely doesn't save them from paying out.
Just like previously mentioned.

They could... and then the owner of that content could sue for a ridiculous amount of money, and win. There's nothing in that ToS that protects them from anything.A girl recently sued for text messages sent to her phone via facebook. $1500 per text. But she had to agree to those texts to receive them. There's nothing on earth that protects them from jackpot justice

You mentioned Mark Zuckerberg was a douche... you and him are definitely cut from the same cloth.

Your post history on this forum is the same over and over, you spend more time trying to prove people wrong than you do anything else. Why did you sign up here? To play bookworm?

 

[Vtec44]

I upload my stuff to Facebook.

 

[o hey tyler]

Omg Internet

 

[Gavjenks]

Me bringing up this lawsuit was relevant to the fact that I mentioned that ToS can say what ever it wants but it still doesn't save anyone from a lawsuit, and it definitely doesn't save them from paying out.

Sure, you can physically bring a lawsuit against whomever you feel like. No legal document can protect you from some idiot hiring a lawyer and serving you papers.

The last part of this sentence, however, is dead wrong. A ToS is a contract, and can of course save its signatories from paying out / losing lawsuits, if the terms of the contract legally release the company from whatever liability they are being sued for.

The lady suing Facebook over telemarketing has nothing useful to do with this conversation, because obviously, Terms of Service aren't supposed to protect you from lawsuits that have nothing to do with anything you wrote in the terms of service... (Also, she has neither won her case nor even been promised a trial, so for all we know, Facebook might very well win that case without the protection of a ToS...)

you spend more time trying to prove people wrong than you do anything else.

I would have given up on this thread a long time ago, because it got tedious a long time ago, but I won't, because it actually matters.

If you post important and valuable photos on Facebook, you are opening yourself up to the possibility of third parties selling your photos for profit potentially idnefinitely, without you knowing about it, and without you legally being able to do anything about it even if you do find out.

Convincing people otherwise is potentially dangerous and could lead to bad consequences. Especially when there are perfectly good alternatives people can use, like Flickr, which do not have such horrible Terms of Service, and where you do not open yourself up to financial losses. I feel a responsibility to help people not be misled or suffer possible financial loss, when I have the power to do so.

 

[Ballistics]

Me bringing up this lawsuit was relevant to the fact that I mentioned that ToS can say what ever it wants but it still doesn't save anyone from a lawsuit, and it definitely doesn't save them from paying out.

Sure, you can physically bring a lawsuit against whomever you feel like. No legal document can protect you from some idiot hiring a lawyer and serving you papers.

The last part of this sentence, however, is dead wrong. A ToS is a contract, and can of course save its signatories from paying out / losing lawsuits, if the terms of the contract legally release the company from whatever liability they are being sued for.

The lady suing Facebook over telemarketing has nothing useful to do with this conversation, because obviously, Terms of Service aren't supposed to protect you from lawsuits that have nothing to do with anything you wrote in the terms of service... (Also, she has neither won her case nor even been promised a trial, so for all we know, Facebook might very well win that case without the protection of a ToS...)

you spend more time trying to prove people wrong than you do anything else.

I would have given up on this thread a long time ago, because it got tedious a long time ago, but I won't, because it actually matters.

If you post important and valuable photos on Facebook:
1) You are not giving up ownership.
2) However you are giving up guaranteed control over what happens to your images, and potentially all of your real world profits from those images. As soon as any friend or anybody else with privacy access reposts your images or shares them, you no longer have complete control over who has a license to redistribute or sell your work, and you may never regain that control.
3) Therefore, you are opening yourself up to the possibility of third parties selling your photos for profit potentially idnefinitely, without you knowing about it, and without you legally being able to do anything about it even if you do find out (you can bring lawsuits, but they will lose, or more likely be thrown out of court with no trial due to the clear wording of the contract).

Convincing people otherwise is potentially dangerous and could lead to bad consequences. Especially when there are perfectly good alternatives people can use, like Flickr, which do not have such horrible Terms of Service, and where you do not open yourself up to financial losses. I feel a responsibility to help people not be misled or suffer possible financial loss, when I have the power to do so.

Well then I guess people should consult with their lawyer then.

 

[Gavjenks]

Well then I guess people should consult with their lawyer then.

If you are a pro photographer, and can afford to hire a lawyer, or if the potential loss of profit from not selling your photographs is much more than the cost of a lawyer, then yes, absolutely, I agree. You should consult with a lawyer.

If the amount you might lose is significantly less than the cost of a lawyer, though (in other words, 99% of the population), then that is not an option. You will have to use your eyes and your brain to read the contracts you sign like a normal person, and realize which ones are really exploitative and sketchy (Facebook) and which ones cover their companies asses, but in a mostly responsible way (e.g. Flickr).

 

[Gavjenks]

By the way, for anybody sharing their photos who wants to reach the people on facebook, but without buying into their terms of service, the solution for the best of both worlds is very simple:

1) Pick a good sample image to hook your audience.
2) Resample it at low resolution (300x400 or whatever) and post it on facebook, along with a link that leads to some other site with your actual, larger resolution gallery with the rest of your photos. one with a more responsible ToS.

It doesn't really matter what happens to your low res sample, because that's useless for any printing or anything, but it draws the facebook community to your site.

Win-win

 

[Buckster]

This is a good place to start getting reliable information about your legal rights as a photographer:

Photographer's Survival Manual: A Legal Guide for Artists in the Digital Age (Lark Photography Book): Edward C. Greenberg, Jack Reznicki: 9781600594205: Amazon.com: Books