Why you should just invest in a photo album...

Intellectual property rights...who even really thinks about 'em? Well, if you have a myspace, facebook or fictionpress account like most of the digital world, you ought to think twice before you post, as I learnt from this feature article...which, by the way, earned me a distinction in advanced print features...woo hoo!

So, bear this in mind and don't steal anyone's stuff...it's just not nice corporate scumbags!!

The Ultimate Face-Off: Intellectual Property Rights on Social Networking Websites –

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but so long as the internet is involved, it may also be worth a thousand problems.

Social networking websites - such as facebook and myspace - under a clause that is clicked on when a user originally signs up, has led to anyone’s published thoughts, happy snaps or desires being considered fair game.

“When you sign onto something on the internet, I like I’d imagine 99.99% of people don’t read those conditions,” says Bill Childs, online legal expert and professor at the University of Technology, Sydney.

“And yet, during that act of button pressing you are probably agreeing to the terms of a contract. It becomes an invisible thing, but it is a some thing.”

And that some thing ultimately means the notion of intellectual property is instantly null and void once you enter cyberspace.

Songwriter and filmmaker, Nikki Malvar, came to this realisation the hard way when she found out that someone had stolen one of her posted stories

“I had an account on fictionpress, I would update it, and one day someone sent me a message that said ‘click on this’” Malvar says. “I looked at it and my work was on this girl’s page without any attribution to me or anything and she passed it off as hers.”

This led Malvar to delete her entire account on fictionpress – if you visit her page on fictionpress, “euphemisms for luke warm tragedies”, you will be greeted with the following vitriolic message:

“ Gone
because plagiarism is a bitch…”

The lack of knowledge about what rights users may retain can be problematic, after that button pressing action automatically agrees to the terms and conditions.

When questioning other work she continues to post on myspace, youtube and facebook and whether it too, may be pilfered, Malvar is vague.

“I don’t really know the ways I can be protected, but I really haven’t done the research or explored my options at the moment, but I guess there would be ways.” she says.

“I actually read somewhere that myspace makes you surrender the copyrights to your music,” Malvar goes on to say. “I don’t know how true that is, but as an artist I want to retain the copyright on my stuff.”

According to Childs, this is very true, and users should not expect any protection once something is posted online.

“I generate a copyright of my own within taking a photo, but these rights cease to exist once I publish it online. The only way I can be pretty sure I’m defending my copyright is to leave that photo right here on my desk.”

Something that Hansika Bhagani found out after her facebook photos became subject to a nationwide scandal, after she and some friends had an encounter with the Indian cricket team.

“We went clubbing with some of the members when they were here in January,” she says. “Some of us had cameras so we took heaps of photos of us all together, drinks in hand.”

The team and Bhagani became friends on facebook, and one of her friends posted the pictures that were taken while out together.

About six months later, the photos were subject to a major controversy.

“Apparently, a South Indian newspaper had published the photos, inaccurately described them as pictures of the Indian cricket team partying in Karachi and furthermore, explained in an article that because the players had been partying in on a French beach in Karachi the night before the Asia Cup, their performance suffered and they lost the game. “

This became a major news item. “If you google, ‘Indian cricketers partying in Karachi’, the photos will come up.” says Bhagani.

And indeed, when googling this very term, a multitude of hits come up, including newspaper, articles, televised news reports and forum discussions all devoted to this very night in question.

Not that it bothers Bhagani too much.

“I don't really feel like my rights were violated since the photos were put up in a public place, and quite frankly, I'm sort of pleased to be part of a scandal!”

So once you put the photo up in public, you no longer have protective rights over it. But this is also applicable when it comes to your own image being taken by someone else.

“I could take your picture right now and publish it all across the world and you would have absolutely no idea…you don’t have any right to your own image.” He says. “I mean you’ve got issues but I really don’t think you have any legal rights, if you want to use them and how are you going to use them anyway?”

And such issues were experienced by regular facebook user, Timothy McIntyre, who vehemently believes in the right to protect his own image.

“I get majorly annoyed by the idea that people can take photos and tag me in them and display them and send them around to everybody without my permission,” he says.

Particularly, such as in McIntyre’s case, where the photos may have defamatory implications.

“Last year a guy I didn't know very well sent facebook and myspace photos around with captions that he had put on them himself, implying that I had cheated on my girlfriend with a girl that I was drunkenly snapped with my arm around.”

This led to others suggesting that McIntyre was unfaithful towards his beloved girlfriend, which eventually led McIntyre to snap.

“I asked the guy repeatedly to take the pictures down, to which he replied that he could do whatever he wanted. It came to a head at a party one night, when I was thrown out after breaking his nose.”

So it can all get a bit nasty, but clearly such social networking sites provide some degree of opportunity to original content creators who otherwise wouldn’t be able to showcase their work.

“It’s because of youtube that I have a few contacts and offers to use my work for other projects,” says Malvar of the benefits the virtual world has provided for her artistic ventures.

“From my view I wouldn’t have had that same exposure but at the same time, it’s not right to just have people come and take your stuff.”

Childs says that it may not be right, but it is well within other people’s rights.

“I would say to anyone who took issue with it that you have surrendered those rights, they yield them.” Says Childs of maintaining intellectual property rights.

To Malvar, this thought is a scary one.

“It really isn’t a good thing, because for us struggling artists I think the internet gives us this platform for exposure, and if there’s such a difficulty in retaining your copyright, then what’s the best thing,” she says, and after a significant pause. “I don’t know.”

By way of suggestion, she offers up the idea for a mutual agreement to be established between the likes of myspace and the content provider, and also believes that bodies such as the Australasian Performers Rights Association (APRA) should have more of an active role.

“I think that there should be like some sort of commercial agreement, like itunes, where myspace gets a certain percent of the profit and the artist gets the majority,” she says. “But APRA should really get more involved.”

But Childs believes that this sort of outlook is completely unrealistic

“APRA is just about politics.” He says. “I have dealt with them many times, in the High Court and to say that APRA has any concern with anyone other than the major commercial artists and composers is frankly just naïve.”

If the situation for intellectual property online seems bleak, it is probably due to the fact that it cannot be properly regulated, something that Childs has long argued.

“I think that it’s unrealistic to believe in regulating or controlling these areas, because it’s just too wide.”

Copyright and contract law would be unable to keep up with the times as they continue to change, from a legal and a social standpoint.

“I don’t pretend you, even contract lawyers don’t know how contracts work,” says Childs.

But all faith need not necessarily be lost. According to Bhagani, wrongs may sometimes be righted.

“The BCCI (The Board for Control of Cricket in India) cleared the matter up with the players involved and issued a statement, rectifying the situation.” She says, once it was revealed that the story was of an untrue nature.

There are also groups on facebook that aim to point users out to the finer points of their virtual agreement that is clicked on when signing up to an account.

This body of knowledge is slowly becoming more accessible to keep people who use such sites in the know.

But as the internet changes, one thing probably won’t: it’s the lack of regulation which currently governs it, which Childs appreciates.

“I think too much regulation is a bad thing, but then, it all comes down to personal involvement,” he says. “If it was a problem for me then I would certainly be more inclined towards pushing for the internet to be regulated.”

So while on these sites, it may be fun to have a massive social contact list, or if you are one of Kevin Rudd’s two thousand odd friends (and counting) an opportunity to launch a virtual taser attack, just don’t be deluded into believing in the existence of online intellectual property.

The bottom line is that if you want to keep those precious memories sacred, it may be advisable to just get a photo album.