Who owns your photos in Social Media?

(Source: www.investopedia.com/2013)

Social media technologies is consist of many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, social networks, podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking.

In this high-tech era, we are dependent on social media to cater lots of information that’s happening in the past or present. Nowadays, everyone has at least one social media account for example Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. Some are doing business in their account and the rest just having it to share their personal photos of their lifestyle etc.

The problem arise when we share our activity especially when it goes viral we never know who is our viewers, anyone can view your photos and grab it or paste it somewhere else that we could not control.

For example what recently happened on Twitter whereby British news organizations has published front-page photos of a helicopter crash sourced from Twitter, it has been taken in that social media source because Twitter is faster a news can be spread out in instance, it only took few seconds to ‘retweet’ the news and it can goes around the globe. 

Lisa O’Caroll says “the fatal helicopter crash in London on Wednesday morning once again put Twitter in the spotlight, with the social network beating traditional media to the story with instant eyewitness accounts, pictures and video.” (guardian.co, 2013).

In the lawsuit, AFP claimed that because "Morel posted several photographs on Twitter in full resolution" that there was "no limitation on their use."

As stated by the author opinion “the Internet being a prime example.... Network armies don't have a formal leadership structure. They have influencers, not bosses who give orders” (Holstein, 2002).

As mentioned above, even though many people argued the reliability of internet sources, but sometimes it helps in providing the valuable news to public, as what happened I the UK, local citizens can be an eye-witness in spreading the information or videos to us. We as viewer/readers should analyze the issue whether it is true or just a rumors spreading without any confirmation.

Thus, to answer who owns our photos in social media for example as what Instagram has practices the photos cannot be copied or re-owned by other account holders unless it is permitted by the owner using “re-post” application. From there we know who has taken our photos and if any negatives story occurred we know who to point your fingers to, unlike facebook anyone can steal our photos and make it their own.

Reference

1)      Holstein, W. J. 2002, “Online, the Armies Have No Borders.” New York Times,

April 28, n. p. -- on line edition

2)      http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/16/twitter-pictures-london-helicopter-crash-copyright