Photographer Loses Copyright Claim By Posting On Instagram

In what will be known as the “Mashable case,” a New York judge has ruled that posting on Instagram gives anyone the right to reuse your images.

When it comes to appropriating images found online, the situation is a bit confusing. Just because an image has been shared publicly, does it give you the right to reuse it?

Most would think that this counts as copyright infringement. But a New York judge may have just set a precedent that will impact copyright law forever.

This story began when Stephanie Sinclair, a professional photographer known for exploring gender and human rights issues around the world, uploaded one of her photographs to Instagram. When Mashable contacted her to reuse the image – an image of a mother and child in Guatemala – for a story, Sinclair declined.

Mashable went ahead anyway and used the image by embedding her Instagram post in its article.

Sinclair, whose work has been featured in The New York Times, Time magazine, and National Geographic, claimed copyright infringement. But U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood ruled in favor of Mashable.

“Here, [Sinclair] granted Instagram the right to sublicense the Photograph, and Instagram validly exercised that right by granting Mashable a sublicense to display the Photograph,” rules Wood.

Posting content publicly on Instagram, apparently gives it the right to sublicense said content.

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The ruling is based on the fact that Sinclair agreed to Instagram’s Terms of Use when she created her account. Those terms granted Instagram “a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to the Content.”

Wood writes that because Sinclair “uploaded the Photograph to Instagram and designated it as ‘public,’ she agreed to allow Mashable, as Instagram’s sublicensee, to embed the Photograph in its website.”

The judge rejected the proposition that Mashable had to get a license directly from Sinclair or that it’s not within the court’s purview to analyze the meaning of Instagram’s agreements and policies. Furthermore, the ruling shoots down the argument that Mashable had no license because it wasn’t the intended beneficiary of Instagram’s terms of use.

This will surely cause tremors in the U.S. legal system and copyright infringement cases throughout the world. But don’t say you haven’t been warned. Posting your content publicly on Instagram will allow for anyone to reuse your content by way of embedding on any platform they want.

Here is a copy of the ruling: