>"Ownership Rights: Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos. Nothing about this has changed. We respect that there are creative artists and hobbyists alike that pour their heart into creating beautiful photos, and we respect that your photos are your photos. Period. I always want you to feel comfortable sharing your photos on Instagram and we will always work hard to foster and respect our community and go out of our way to support its rights."
He should add in brackets that the user has automatically given Instagram "Ownership" of a gold plated license to do whatever the hell it wants with content posted, in case anyone was wondering.
It can mean that they cannot re-license your work, which is to say you wouldn't have to compete with them in terms of pricing to a third party but I don't know if that is what the ToS says so a closer reading is in order.
So I would say "sub-license" means "re-license". It would be very unfortunate to have to compete with Instagram on pricing for your own content to a third party. Or some company that buys Instagram/Facebook out.
Just read this bit: "To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear."
So I think that clears up the 'sub-licensable' aspect. It doesn't rule out giving them away for free - which come to think of it, would hard to compete with price-wise! I'm really starting to wonder what they had in mind.
A reply from the author of the article in the comments[0]:
> You guys know that I used to be a copyright lawyer, right? This stuff is all boilerplate terms of service — every service from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, etc all have it.
0: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/18/3780158/instagrams-new-te...
As you can see, the new Instagram © license is like Facebook's or Twitter's. But very different from others. (Actually, the current Instagram © license is okay)
I'd very much like to see how he responds.
What are you talking about? Have you read their ethics statement[0] yet?
In the world of journalism, that's a very serious accusation to be making without any evidence.
You might want to read the link you posted.
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> This stuff is all boilerplate terms of service — every service from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, etc all have it.
Look at the former section "Proprietary Rights in Content on Instagram"
> 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. By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly ("private") will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services.
This section about copyright has turned into something pretty much like Facebook's:
> Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service, except that you can control who can view certain of your Content and activities on the Service as described in the Service's Privacy Policy, available here:http://instagram.com/legal/privacy/.