On the face of it it might seem nonsensical that by posting a photo to Instagram you are giving up your copyright in the image — but as Judge Kimba Wood recently ruled, that is indeed the case. When you sign up for an account on Instagram you apparently agree to terms granting them “a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to the Content”. Mashable just won the suit for copyright infringement brought against them by Stephanie Sinclair who turned down Mashable‘s $50 offer yet saw them use her photo of a Guatemalan mother and child anyway. The Hollywood Reporter carries the story. (Link via Technology • Innovation • Publishing.)

This, rather obviously, demonstrates the need to read the small type. Of course we all brush this off, and that may be OK for day-to-day life. After all why would you want to use Apple’s OS Catalina for anything other than the purposes they have designed it for? But if you refuse to read the full contract you agree to just don’t think you can then bring a law suit — or at least don’t waste your money doing so until you’ve taken the time to read carefully what you signed up to years ago.

This is another of the many cases which indicate the need to clarify our copyright laws. Copyright law as it stands is ruggedly analog: “Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed”. The law urgently needs to start to take account of the digital world directly, not just by logical extension. The online world is quite obviously different from the world of print. Showing you my photograph of a family in Guatemala is quite clearly a different matter from my publishing it in a book or a magazine. If I show you a photograph I took, either as a hard copy or on my iPhone, you’d never imagine that you had any right to reproduce it. If I gave you a print? If you see it online does that amount to its being it published? What if I send a picture to you as an email attachment? Common sense may provide ready answers to these questions, but copyright law may not be the right mechanism for protecting all uses.

Let us bear in mind that the reason for having copyright protection in the first place is not to enrich content creators; it is “to promote the progress of useful arts and science” by encouraging authors to share their works without just giving them away. This seems to bear scant relation to a social media “publication” of you modeling your latest outfit.