Comments on: Wil Wheaton on Instagram’s new TOS

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 00:10:00 +0000

And now we must wonder forever what you might have said if you had bothered to read the post. All two sentences of it.

By: fuzzyfuzzyfungus

fuzzyfuzzyfungus — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:19:00 +0000

Was he asleep when Facebook started tagging faces in every picture uploaded to their mothership? Assimilating instagram obviously doesn’t help; but the capacity(and, indeed, the direct incentive) for the various ‘social’ crap to use the people they have hooks in to drag in the ones that they don’t (yet) have direct access to is, unfortunately, not a new thing…

By: Boundegar

Boundegar — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:18:00 +0000

I have an even more perfect solution. I never joined Facebook, so they can’t violate my privacy. If I really want to share photos, I have the magic of email.

But a Minecraft server would be boss.

By: UltraPunch

UltraPunch — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:12:00 +0000

So tired of hearing about this. If a app or service you use opts in to a policy you don’t agree with simply stop using the product. It’s a very easy process.

By: signsofrain

signsofrain — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:55:00 +0000

I don’t use photo sharing services. I run a small web server (it’s also a minecraft, ftp, and VPN server) in my home on my home internet connection. When I want to share private photos with family/internet pals I put them in an .htaccess protected directory with some PHP gallery software and I’m done. More people should run small home servers, they are really not that hard to set up. I’m surprised it’s not more common.

By: tyger11

tyger11 — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:51:00 +0000

‘no longer enough’? Welcome to the land of the clued-in. It’s hasn’t been enough for years now. Certainly Facebook made that much worse than it was before, but this is hardly something Instagram has done.

By: autark

autark — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:40:00 +0000

While Instagram *may* be able to use TOS to acquire rights to a photographer’s image, even for a commercial purpose (that remains to be seen, you can’t write something illegal into TOS and have it be enforceable, it could still be challenged in court)… Instagram would be *incredibly* stupid to use images that were anything other than artistic, abstract, or landscape photography. You can’t use people’s image for commercial purpose without their permission. Even if you are the original photographer and not Instagram. Instagram would not have a waiver on file from Seth Green or Kaley Cuoco allowing them to use their image as an endorsement, so these don’t seem likely ways that Instagram would abuse this new TOS. Not saying the TOS isn’t stupid, just that worrying about those uses is probably not useful for the argument.

By: Gabriel Nagmay

Gabriel Nagmay — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:35:00 +0000

TOS? I thought Mr. Wheaton starred in TNG…

No, really – my brain read that as “Wil Wheaton Instagrams New (Star Trek) The Original Series”.

Stupid brain.