Social media content rights

Social media content rights can be an issue when content is posted by a user of social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and is then copied and reused without the user's permission - often by commercial organisations. For example a photograph posted to a social media site which is then reused without arranging a licence from the copyright holder (usually the photographer).

See also Fair dealing, Creative Commons

Cases

Rocknroll v News Group Newspapers

The case between Edward Rocknroll and News Group Newspapers Ltd was heard in January 2013. The case relates to photographs taken of Mr. Rocknroll in July 2010, which were subsequently posted on Facebook by Rocknroll's friend. News Group wanted to publish the pictures in the Sun, however Mr. Rocknroll is attempting to restrain their publication.

In particular, its evidence that the standard terms and conditions of Facebook provide for a non-exclusive transferrable licence in favour of Facebook in respect of material accessible to its account-holders affords no basis for a conclusion that the claimant lacks the ordinary entitlement, as copyright owner by assignment, to restrain breach by the defendant. No transfer of Facebook's rights to the defendant has been alleged, and it seems very unlikely that the proprietors of Facebook would think it in their interests to do so in the future, at almost any price.

• Bailii EWHC/Ch/2013/24
• Case Law: Rocknroll v News Group, privacy injunction granted against the “Sun” – Mark Thomson, 2013-01-18, Inforrm

External links

• Social Media: Whose Photo Is It Anyway?, 2013-01-17, Copyright for Education
• Twitter pictures put in spotlight following London helicopter crash, 2013-01-16, Guardian
• News flash for the media: You can't sell photos grabbed from Twitter, 2013-01-16, Ars Technica