This is worse than "by continuing to use this site/software you are agreeing to our terms" and would basically be saying "by mentioning this string of characters, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to your content with or without attribution at our discretion."<p>Unacceptable. I don't see how this should work out any way except in the favor of the copyright holders.
"If you Tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet"
<a href="https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309" rel="nofollow">https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309</a> - and first result searching for anything like 'Twitter hashtag'.<p>I think that's pretty clearly publishing and explicitly choosing to make your image/thought/whatever available to whatever you #mention. That does seem like granting permission for the #brand to share the content through social spaces. I'd expect them to ask permission before using it in "actual" advertisements (billboards, signs, commercials, etc), but anything shy of that seems like fair game.<p>The nearest thing I can think to compare it to (pre-Internet) would be mailing a photo to the company; what would you expect them to do with it?
> Legally speaking, a lack of case law means the jury’s out. But for brands striving to connect with their constituency, it’s clear that more explicit permission is needed for brand-based tags (e.g. #calvinklein), or more complicated tags (e.g. #caughtondropcam) need to be used so that the claim of implied consent is more defensible.<p>Specific tags only solve half the problem. Someone could copy the tag from someone else without being aware of the campaign going on.
Hashtags can be vague as well -- what if it was a picture of a child at the zoo in front of crocodiles? Who says <i>that</i> particular hashtag gives <i>that</i> particular party permission to use the photo?
I think its reasonable to think that your content will only be used in a way the platform supports - retweets on twitter, embeds on instagram. The use of those "re-gramming" apps has always seemed a bit wrong to me and ripping the image from the context of the app and using it on your website is a step even further in to wrong.
I think this can depend on a few things. The license terms under which UGC is uploaded, how UGC is (re-)distributed, (for example retweet vs a capture vs a DL.) and context (part of a news item, or commercial endeavor).<p>However, I think parents especially overshare things about their children. Once you let something out of the bag, it's going to be hard to put it back.<p>And, of course, if you're using something for commercial purpose, you need to seek permission, if you're unsure about the license. However, much of the public's loosey goosey attitude toward copyright can filter into the attitudes of unsophisticated marketing organizations (an intern etc. not familiar with IP thinks they are doing "guerilla" mkting, for example).
It's a complicated topic without nearly enough exploration in the legal area, and without any real agreement from the companies that run these social media platforms. Twitter's ToS (and their reps) have said you can embed anything without needing advanced permission; Instagram says the opposite. Media outlets use embedded tweets/Instagrams for editorial purposes everywhere, and this seems like it would be fair use (taking a snippet of a 140 character message as you would with an article makes no sense) but some people still complain. No one has any problem with embedding YouTube videos or Vines. How this all plays out is likely to be decided in the coming decades in courts and the media.<p>Three things that would be incredibly helpful in this area:<p>1) All these services should give users the ability to prevent embedding of their posts either globally or on a post by post basis. Drawing a very bright line like this makes what is and is not OK very clear. Off or on by default would be debatable.<p>2) Supply a UI or API for automatically obtaining licensing permission (requester goes to an Instagram post, clicks/taps "request license to use in/on {web, billboard, TV commercial, etc.}" which sends a message to the original poster, poster can than choose to consent/refuse, response is sent to the requester.<p>3) Make some public statements / legal guarantees (i.e., a promise to stand behind people who get sued even when using service-provided embedding tools) about what they consider acceptable usage.<p>Right now it's just very gray, and the safe route is to obtain advanced permission for anything with a photo, which I think goes against the frictionless spirit of the old web (i.e., just put up a link or excerpt a post and be done with it.) The service-provided embedding tools try to maintain that spirit in the more walled-gardeny world, but legal uncertainties still make that iffy. I wrote a bit more on this previously: <a href="https://medium.com/@sthware/user-generated-content-embedding-and-permission-2ae8b2edcf74" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@sthware/user-generated-content-embedding...</a><p>I'm not sure what the legal reasoning would be for "hashtags as consent for photo usage", but something tells me that it probably wouldn't hold up in court if it came down to it.<p>Edit: another thing that needs discussion is things that seem innocent to many, but could be legally questionable. Prominent example: retweets. Let's say you embed a Twitter widget of your company's feed on your web site's product page. You retweet something someone has posted about your product. It then appears in the feed, on the web site, next to your products. Protected or not? Using some of the logic from Heigl vs Duane Reade, it might not be: <a href="https://social.ogilvy.com/celebrities-suing-brands-for-a-tweet/" rel="nofollow">https://social.ogilvy.com/celebrities-suing-brands-for-a-twe...</a>
I got this other day for a music sync. Retweet to approve. C'mon guys...<p><a href="https://twitter.com/_Live_Better/status/651734344487333888" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/_Live_Better/status/651734344487333888</a>
Once you put it online w/ public access I think it's fair game.<p>I'm more in the camp of: don't put things you don't want other to share / look at online (yes, pictures of your kids especially)
I find it interesting that nobody is mentioning the inverse - plenty of HNers seem to think it is okay to redistribute companies' generated content (and I agree with piracy) yet many of you here are somehow thinking that because of "privacy" on a perfectly public website like Twitter that a company shouldn't be allowed to redistribute what (unfortunately) is content that Twitter owns (because the user submitted to Twitter and Twitter's terms). But what ever happened to the privacy rights of companies' generated content, why shouldn't they require you to get permission before you reshare that pirated content? I sniff double standards.
You can't inadvertently shill if you keep your mouth shut, you can't be misconstrued as consenting if you don't hashtag.<p>Maybe it's time to think about how unnatural it is for us to be sharing this much of our lives online, instead of complaining about corporations doing what corporations do, which is overstep the bounds of good taste and sanity in the name of making another buck.
OT, but from the title I expected this would be about people who treat Twitter as if it were a discussion forum and expect a debate from someone who uses a hashtag. It's an obnoxious behaviour, #gamergate is the most famous example.