Pixiq

What's yours is yours, right?

That's the premise behind most photographers' understanding of copyright and ownership of photos and it's the premise behind Twitter's new move into hosting their own photography sharing service. The simple idea is that we own the copyright to a photograph (an artistic creation) as soon as we click the shutter and we retain those rights when we share them online. Or de we?

The hard thing for most photographers to grasp is that we often give up those rights when we upload images to various sites across the Internet. This can be true on more traditional sites like forums and communities as well as newer online entities like social media.

Take this recent article on PBS' MediaShift Who Really Owns Your Photos in Social Media?

Twitter's Sean Garrett (@sg) echoed Costolo's message in a tweet: "What's yours is yours - you own your content on Twitter. Your photos will be part of that content."

Most of this started because World Entertainment News Network (WENN) announced that it had partnered with Twitpic to "sell images posted" on the site and "to pursue legal action against those who use such images commercially without its permission." and the backlash was so swift and big that they had to revise their terms of service.

Twitter is trying to be the good guy here and I have to commend them for the effort but navigating the legal space of copyright on the Internet is hard, not just for photographers, but for online businesses as well. Terms of service changes, license agreements change, and online communities get bought (and with them go the rights of the content providers).

The article goes in-depth on the reasons you should be aware of the terms of service when you use a photo sharing site.

Baker advises photographers to think about these things when reviewing a license:

• the reach (Twitpic and Twitter are both global licenses, worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicensable),
• the scope (both Twitpic and Twitter claim broad rights to modify and display photos) and
• any restrictions, such as a prohibition on commercial use (neither explicitly prohibits commercial use and Twitter tacitly acknowledges commercial use is possible in its statement about compensation).

Remember that not all License agreements are created equal.

Are you reading your TOS?

Who really reads those long-winded terms of service pages that you likely were pressed to agree to before you used the service? If you live in the Apple universe it would take a law degree and a few hours to do that and actually understand what you're agreeing to.

The good news with Apple, as of their announcement yesterday about native Twitter integration in iOS 5, is that you're likely a little safer using Twitter natively through your iOS devices if Twitter's new photo sharing license agreements carry through all the way. Read the fine print to be sure.

Thankfully we have a resource that can help us out a little bit. Most online photographers are aware of the Photo Attorney blog run by Carolyn E. Wright. This blog is one of my top photography websites and Haje has them on his Unmissable Photography Sites list as well. If you're a photographer who cares, in any way at all, about your rights as a photographer you should be reading this blog religiously.

As photographers who share work online, and don't we all, it's important to understand and keep up with the copyright laws pertaining to our photographs. How are they being used? Who owns what?

Our conundrum is that we want to share our photos with the world but we don't want to give up our rights. We can do that if we are careful about reading the license agreements and stay up to date with the law...right?