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posted by Fnord666 on Monday June 08 2020, @03:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the this-department-is-copyrighted dept.

Instagram just threw users of its embedding API under the bus:

Instagram does not provide users of its embedding API a copyright license to display embedded images on other websites, the company said in a Thursday email to Ars Technica. The announcement could come as an unwelcome surprise to users who believed that embedding images, rather than hosting them directly, provides insulation against copyright claims.

"While our terms allow us to grant a sub-license, we do not grant one for our embeds API," a Facebook company spokesperson told Ars in a Thursday email. "Our platform policies require third parties to have the necessary rights from applicable rights holders. This includes ensuring they have a license to share this content, if a license is required by law."

In plain English, before you embed someone's Instagram post on your website, you may need to ask the poster for a separate license to the images in the post. If you don't, you could be subject to a copyright lawsuit.

Professional photographers are likely to cheer the decision, since it will strengthen their hand in negotiations with publishers. But it could also significantly change the culture of the Web. Until now, people have generally felt free to embed Instagram posts on their own sites without worrying about copyright concerns. That might be about to change.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @05:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @05:26AM (#1004736)

    That is the essence of the "server test." The entity liable for infringing content is the entity serving the content. There is some flexibility if you "hotlink" without attribution, because it then appears that you are the entity serving the content, but Instagram embeds literally put a big fancy attribution box around the embedded content. I understand that Instagram doesn't want to turn into the copyright police to figure out whether a usage is allowed or not, but then the simple thing to do is block the embeds unless the accounts holder specifically allows it.

    It is worth noting that there are theories that would make the embedders liable as well for embedding without permission, but none of that would seem to clear Instagram of their direct liability cause by their lack of desire to sublicense.

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