Last night, CNET broke a kinda-distressing story on Instagram, the ubiquitous mobile photo-sharing app that Facebook famously paid $1 billion for last year, despite the fact that it hadn’t shown a single dollar of profit. Now, Daddy Zuckerberg’s company claims that it owns the intellectual property rights to every photo posted on by service, from the beginning of time to the end of time.
In other words, Facebook can now turn Instagram from a whimsical & sincere lifestyle app into the world’s largest stock photo repository.
Who cares, you shrug. I’ll just read the terms & conditions carefully and opt out. There’s always a way to opt out. It’s the law. Well, true, but this time, Facebook & Instagram are making it a little more black-and-white. To opt out, you have to deactivate your Instagram account by January 16th, 2013. If you don’t, your non-action opts you in.
CNET wasn’t able to get ahold of Facebook for comment, so for now we can only speculate whether the company intends to act on this legal prerogative, or if it’s just heavy-handed lawyer language that has the internet up in arms.
What do you think? Is this new move enough to make you quit Instagramming? Or do you think all’s fair? Vote in our poll below!
via CNET
