14 DAY TRIAL // Due to the rise and rise of Twitter, its dedicated photo sharing Twitpic also got a lot of attention, and following a scandal related to them selling users' pictures, they have updated their Terms of Service (ToS) to reassure members that this is not the case.
It was recently revealed that their previous ToS text was not explicit enough, and would allow third-party organizations to use the photos without any legal interdiction.
Understandably, users did not react too good when they realized that the photos they took and uploaded to Twitpic might be published anywhere on the Web.
And this is why Noah Everett, the man who founded Twitpic in 2008, wrote a blog post announcing everyone about an update to the service's ToS.
According to him, it is now clearly stated that those who upload photos and videos also retain full copyright over their content, and that nobody can use them without their consent.
As he put it, “you the user retain all copyrights to your photos and videos, it’s your content” so members get to choose the way their files will be used.
In order to make sure that third-party entities will no longer be distributing copyrighted material, “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.”
While the action is commendable, one cannot avoid wondering whether Twitpic's ToS would have been modified had it not been for the large scale controversy.
Predictably, this will probably be followed by a series of ToS updates to other photo-sharing services that were equally ambiguous in their license terms.
In the end, the winners will be, as always, the users, since their privacy and copyright will be protected by additional law enforcements.