In response to ‘suicide note’ news photo-sharing site Instagram (Facebook) will soon (Jan 2013) use/sell photos posted by its users commercially (to advertisers) without remuneration, notification or recognition. Story here.
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Content is imperial, as we all know.
And the good thing is, that content you create can never belong to someone else*.
Good content will increase visits via search engines.
And through social mechanisms – as people share cool stuff with their networks.
Its beauty and value has never been more clearly framed (thanks to the internet), or indeed courted by brands.
Brands now publish content interesting to their market which may only have indirect relevance to their product or service – all in the interest of starting and maintaining a conversation.
But People make much more content these days.
The multitudes of experiences and inspiration individuals are exposed to, coupled with those handy little cameras/video recorders and text editors in their pockets, mean they creatively outweigh all the ad agencies in the world – by a lot. Sorry fellas. Sorry, us.
But it’s ok, because they’re protected, by copyright – a nice piece of universal law which says it’s not OK to take something other people did and pass it off as your own.
You can see why. It’s not fair. You didn’t do it. They did.
The moment of inspiration and creativity is sacred. It is the result of a million previous personal moments which effect motivation and perception, realisation, interpretation and action, to produce something unique.
It might not be good. Often it is awful. But it belongs to no one other than the maker.
So, *Facebook / Instagram, it is not OK to change your T&Cs and just negate that purity, good or bad, for the benefit of brands – however much money you lost this year.
And if you believe it is, you are placing yourself above the people you rely on. And it will not end well.
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Me on Instagram – for the time being:
