(MAJOR UPDATE – December 17, 2021 – Instagram today announced that users can now choose if they wish to allow their images to be embedded on third-party websites. To learn more, check out ASMP’s announcement here.)
This afternoon ASMP General Counsel Thomas Maddrey sent a letter to the CEO of Instagram Adam Mosseri and the CEO of Facebook (Instagram’s parent company) Mark Zuckerberg on behalf of all ASMP Members expressing our concerns about the recent court case Sinclair v. Ziff-Davis. You may read the letter here.
This letter was supported and signed by seven other visual associations: American Photographic Artists, American Society for Collective Rights Licensing, Digital Media Licensing Association, Graphic Artists Guild, North American Nature Photographers Association, National Press Photographers Association, and Professional Photographers of America.
In this letter, we ask Instagram to do three things: (1) allow both personal and business users to restrict embedding of their work on a per-image and account-wide basis; (2) change its Terms of Use and Platform Policy to prevent the type of use present in this case; and, (3) open a frank and ongoing dialog with ASMP, the other groups listed above, and the entire creator community to ensure that our voices are heard as Instagram continues to grow in the future. All of these are things that Instagram could do immediately that would make a significant difference to photographers the world over.
We are proud to stand with this group of associations and proud to act on behalf of our members and the visual creator community as a whole. Thank you for being a member, and we will update you with the outcome of our correspondence in the coming days and weeks.
To learn more about this case, why it matters, and how you can protect yourself, please see the articles ASMP has already created here and here. Please click on the image below to read the entire letter.
