The news came last night after Instagram changed their policy without nofitying users and there is no opt out clause.
The company’s new intellectual property policy comes into effect on January 16th, a mere three months after Facebook and Mark Zuckerburg purchased Instagram.
The only way to avoid your photos being used without your permission is to delete your Instagram account before January. If users opt to keep their account their photos could potentially be sold.
The new policy grants Facebook the right to license all public Instagram images to third party companies including advertisers.
This move would essentially make the photo sharing site the biggest stock photo agency in the world.
So w/ it's new terms & conditions, instagram is now the new istockphoto, except they won't have to pay you ANYTHING to use your images. 😑
— dj100proof (@dj100proof) December 18, 2012
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation said: "It's asking people to agree to unspecified future commercial use of their photos. That makes it challenging for someone to give informed consent to that deal."
A further issue that could arise if users have choose not to delete their Instagram account before January 16th means users could have waived their right to parent company Facebook using or selling any images as well.
Google and Yahoo’s image policy are much stricter. Google and its subsidiary companies like Google+ or Picasa states, "The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our services."
Yahoo's policy for Flickr is similar stating images are "solely for the purpose for which such content was submitted or made available."
The new Instagram policy also says the company is not responsible for any libellous content provided by users. "Instagram will not be liable for any use or disclosure of any content you provide."
