Popular photo application, Instagram backed down today from a planned policy change that were widely interpreted as a plan to sell user generated contents or photos to third parties without paying royalty to users.
Yesterday, the Facebook-owned Instagram made changes to its privacy policy and terms of service set to take effect January 16 and had included wording that appeared to allow user pictures to be used by advertisers without user consent.
The terms of service state, “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.”
The terms also state that “a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos, and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.”
Commenting on the new terms in the company blog today, Kevin Systrom Co-founder of Instagram said that “It was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.”
Systrom also said that Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over the photos.
Instagram said that it is working on the updated the terms.
Facebook made an offer to purchase Instagram (with its 13 employees) for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock in April 2012. As of September, Instagram has 100 million users.
[Source]– Instagram Blog
