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Copyright and attribution on Instagram: Should we ask for permission? By Oliver Lang and Misho Baranovic
Instagram has enabled anyone with an iPhone to share their images with the world. As the number of photos uploaded to Instagram increases, so do the instances of photographs being reproduced without attribution or permission. In most cases, this is an infringement of the holder’s (photographer’s) rights to the image.
So how does copyright work on Instagram? According to their legal notice:
“Instagram does NOT claim ANY ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or any other materials (collectively, “Content”) that you post on or through the Instagram Services.” You can find the full terms here: http://instagr.am/legal/terms/
Well that sounds pretty good! The images you post to Instagram belong to you. But what happens if somebody uses your Instagram images without asking?
In recent weeks, we’ve seen instances where people are reposting a user’s IG images and claiming them as their own, taking credit for the work. This is easily fixed by reporting the offending user to Instagram or posting directly to the feed, shaming them into removing the image.
We are also starting to see people use Instagram images on online articles and blog posts without attribution or permission given to the photographer.
A recent example is an online wrap up of the Marquee night club opening in Sydney. The article, on the Guest of a Guest Blog, titled “Best $2K I Ever Spent!” Instagram Round Up: The Grand Opening Of Marquee Sydney” uses 28 Instagram images to show the night’s festivities. The article attributes the photos to the #Marquee tag on Statigram. None of the photos are attributed to the individual photographers or link back to the Statigram images.
After contacting several of the image owners on Instagram, MPG members Misho Baranovic and Oliver Lang could not find one instance where permission had been either sought or granted for the use of the images in the article. Two of the photographers expressed concern that they had not being asked for permission.
One of the IG images used in the article. Source: @esta87 - *Note as you can see on this image, Statigram gives you a re-post function which overlays the photographers name, Statigram link and profile pic on the image.
We think that a general Statigram hashtag link is insufficient attribution for the original owner of the Instagram image. Yes, Instagram is fun and social, but we feel that using someone’s Instagram images without asking permission, or providing attribution, remains a breach of the photographer’s copyright.
What do you think? Should you ask for permission when using Instagram images? Or are they there for the taking?
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Embedding #Instagram into your Website with RSS
Hi everyone,
I spent a good part of yesterday trying to embed my Instagram feed into my new website.
I must confess that I’m a website building ludite, I can’t code, I barely understand how to work with html. So, with this in mind, I set out trying to find an easy way of getting my IG feed into the website.
I started looking for embeddable code/instructions and found this site: http://embedagram.com/. Yes, it gave me a little three photo viewer that I could stick into the site but it was small and got lost in the style of the site. There were customisation options but, again this was over my head.
I then considered adding a direct link to one of the many Instagram web viewers. This worked but did not flow with the site and to be honest, every IG web viewer, whether it’s Webstagram, Ink361 or Statigram, are cluttered, have excess links and do not showcase individual images well.
So, poking around Statigram, I found both the vanity URL and RSS feed URL for my personal feed. You can see them both in the image below.
So, I thought, why not just embed the Statigram RSS Feed into my website? I did a quick Google search and found RSS Include a customised RSS feed viewer.
I signed up for a trial account and very quickly made a customised RSS Feed box for my Instagram photos. As you can see in the screen grabs, the program lets you customise the size, style, columns/rows of photos you would like to display. I tried to match mine as closely to the other pages on my website. Note* the RSS Include subscription is US $49.90 a year (not to bad). There might be free programs, but this worked for me.
After getting the design right, I took the code above and inserted into my html editor on my website. I used Virb to build my website and can highly recommend it for easy content addition and creation. It was a bit of a game changer for me in terms of freedom to get my photos online in a visually pleasing and easy way. They also have great help support and will be adding a swag of features in the next two weeks, including store integration.
The feed embedded itself with ease, here is a screen shot of the page:
You can check out the final page here. Hovering the cursor over the image will show the caption of the IG image. Clicking on the image will take you to through to the Statigram photo page.
As you can see, I’ve kept it very clean to let viewers focus on the images.
Hope the post is of use. Let me know if you have any questions about the process.
Cheers,
Misho
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Instagram: Featured: Mobile Photo Group
The Mobile Photo Group featured on the official Instagram blog!! You can check out what the group is up to at www.mobilephotogroup.com
Earlier this year, a group of mobile photographers got together to form the Mobile Photo Group, an international collective of 11 photographers dedicated to promoting their work and presenting mobile photography as an important and evolving form of photography. It just so happens that some…
