You may have posted pictures on Facebook and Twitter and countless other social media platforms over the past few years. If you’re like most people, you probably never spent a single moment wondering about who owns those pictures. If you did, you most likely assumed that they were your pictures. You took the pics; you owns the pics. It’s as simple as that….Or maybe not.

In early 2010, Daniel Morel was taking photographs in Port au Prince, Haiti. Morel has worked in Haiti for over twenty-five years as a photographer. He was there taking pictures of the devastation caused by the earthquake. With the advent of Twitter, Morel and thousands of other photographers like him have been able to quickly provide snapshots of such newsworthy events nearly instantaneously. This time was no different.

Morel uploaded his photos on Twitpic and posted on Twitter that he had “exclusive earthquake photos.” Nearly as quickly as Morel uploaded his photos, Lisandro Suero copied Morel’s Twitpics and reposted them as his own. In this new up-to-second news world, it should come as no surprise that nearly as quickly as both those Twitpic posts a photo editor at AFP (Agence France Presse), a French news group, had downloaded Morel’s pictures, transferred them to Getty Images and attributed them as copyrighted to Suero.

After a sordid bout of cease and desist letters, AFP brought a declaratory judgment action asking the court to rule that they did not infringe Morel’s copyright (Agence France Presse v. Morel, 2011 WL 147718 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 14, 2011)). AFP’s main argument was that they had an express license to use Morel’s images based on Twitter and Twitpic’s Terms of Service (ToS). The judge rejected AFP’s argument, saying in part:

“[B]y their express language, Twitter’s terms grant a license to use content only to Twitter and its partners. Similarly, Twitpic’s terms grant a license to use photographs only to Twitpic.com or affiliated sites…the provision that Twitter ‘encourage[s] and permit[s] broad re-use of Content’ does not clearly confer a right on others to re-use copyrighted postings” -Agence France Presse v. Morel, 10 Civ. 2730 (WHP) (S.D.N.Y.; Dec. 23, 2010)

Even though this immediate suit caused little problems for TwitPic, they saw that there could be a number of incidents where copyright claims become a further issue. In an attempt to head off these claims, TwitPic founder Noah Everett posted a blog post recently titled “Your Content, your copyrights.” Everett writes:

“To clarify our ToS regarding ownership, you the user retain all copyrights to your photos and videos, it’s your content. Our terms state by uploading content to Twitpic you allow us to distribute that content on twitpic.com and our affiliated partners. This is standard among most user-generated content sites (including Twitter). If you delete a photo or video from Twitpic, that content is no longer viewable.

“As we’ve grown, Twitpic has been a tool for the spread of breaking news and events. Since then we’ve seen this content being taken without permission and misused. We’ve partnered with organizations to help us combat this and to distribute newsworthy content in the appropriate manner. This has been done to protect your content from organizations who have in the past taken content without permission. As recently as last month, a Twitpic user uploaded newsworthy images of an incident on a plane, and many commercial entities took the image from Twitpic and used it without the user’s permission.

"To sum everything up, you the user retain all copyrights to your photos/videos and we are very sorry by the confusion our old updated terms of service caused.”

Things appear to be settled and you can rest assured that your TwitPics are your own property…for now. It won’t be long before we see the next online copyright issue in this world of fast changing technology.

Photo 1: Bela Nemeth, Creative Commons

Photo 2: Pasquale D’Silva, Creative Commons.