3 ms·

Do you give up copyright when you upload photos to Facebook or LinkedIn?

• JohnFen 7y ago
  No, you don't. You grant them a perpetual license to use those photos. You aren't granting a license to any companies who scrape those photos to use them. However, copyright only applies to distributing copies -- someone could collect and use photos and not violate copyright as long as they don't redistribute those photos. Another wrinkle is that in the US the copyright of a photo belongs to the person who took the picture, not the person who appears in it (unless an assignment of copyright was signed). So, if you posted a picture of yourself that you didn't take then you probably aren't the copyright holder, which would mean that you aren't the one who would have the right to recourse for any misuse of it.
  • bosswipe 7y ago
    The grey area is if data gleaned from a photo is also under copyright. Clearview could analyze public photos and store facial data from them without storing the photos themselves.
    • JohnFen 7y ago
      Right, this was what I was alluding to. I am not a lawyer, but I have a solid lay understanding of copyright. By my understanding (which may be wrong!), copyright law does not prohibit this use of the pictures at all. However, if they are providing the pictures themselves as part of the search results, there may indeed be a copyright issue.