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Are pics posted by people in myspace and facebook considered public domain?

Barfo

Barfo

Lifer
I need a couple thousand pictures of random people for a web project of mine, first thought on how to get them is to write a crawler that downloads them from sites like facebook and myspace. Is it legal to use them for my project? I don't want Jane Doe suing me when she finds her picture is in some website, any ATOT lawyers?
 
Doubt their public domain. Myspace or facebook probably owns them. However with facebook I dont think they will care.
 
"Do I retain the copyright and other legal rights to material I upload to Facebook?
Yes, you retain the copyright to your content. When you upload your content, you grant us a license to use and display that content. For more information please visit our Terms of Use, which contain information about intellectual property, as well as your privileges and responsibilities as a Facebook user."

 
Originally posted by: KevinCU
The risk is obviously worth it.
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Not if I end up losing money, which is the opposite of what I want the pictures for. And I do realize you're joking/neffing.

Originally posted by: tasmanian
Doubt their public domain. Myspace or facebook probably owns them. However with facebook I dont think they will care.
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If I upload a picture of myself to myspace, they own it? that's odd.

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
ever seen jailbait? pretty sure 90% of that comes from it...
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What's that? 😕
 
I have no clue on the subject so shouldn't comment, but with the legal climate today, my guess is that you would more likely be sued for 'defamation of character' than intellectual property.
 
The uploader owns the picture. Some sites, such as flickr, let the uploader mark the image as creative commons, which gives permission for others to use the photo. Without creative commons, it is not legal for you to use their image.
 
If you're profiting from it, you will find that suddenly everyone wants their cut.

If you are doing something for free (AKA the lolcat thing), no one cares.
 
Originally posted by: barfo
If I upload a picture of myself to myspace, they own it? that's odd.
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That's the way it is. Read the TOS (especially of facebook) closely.

Also, good luck writing a crawler to mine facebook.

Originally posted by: mugs
No.
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Correct answer.
 
I highly doubt they're public domain... whether facebook/myspace owns them or the user who uploaded them is a whole other bag.
 
Does the person that took the picture own the copyright?

Ahh what the hell go ahad and do it anyway. You only live once!
 
Originally posted by: Leros
I bet there is a source of public domain pictures out there somewhere.
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I-m looking for it, but I doubt it will have 10k different face pictures of each gender, hell, I-m even doubting I-ll be able to buy as much from paid stock picture sources :frown:
 
If I'm not mistaken, the photos are copyrighted by their owners implicitly in US, Europe and many other countries. By using/distributing the photos without their permission, you are almost certainly violating their copyright and will open you up to lawsuits. And while it is legal to photograph people in public places, the commercial use of those photos (as opposed to editorial use) will require a signed model release.

If what you're doing is non-commercial, several Flickr photos are released under the Creative Commons License. Although the photographer may have released it that way, there's no guarantee the photographer got a proper model release from the subject of the photo.

In summary, if you didn't take it the photo (and occasionally, even if it is) and it's not explicitly stated as public domain, it would be illegal for you to use it commercially.
 
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