Who Owns What You Post on Social Media?

If you stop to think about it, we tend to post a lot of intellectual property on the internet, if you are involved in social media to any extent. Whether for personal reasons, or for commercial marketing purposes, our words, pictures, ideas—almost any content that we create on our own is intellectual property and has a value.

But that value also may have value to someone else—and can lead to others copying or stealing your content.

The Terms of Service

The rights that a social media company has to the content that you post is usually described in the site’s terms of service (TOS).

While all TOS can be different, as a general rule, most provide the site with a license to use the content that you post, or to use it in any way that it wants to. Posting some statement that you don’t grant authorization to the site to use your content is useless and does not override the permissions granted to the company via your agreement to the company’s TOS.

Note that this may be different for paid advertising, where the TOS will usually not allow the company to just take your marketing slogans, songs or images to use as they please, and which may be governed by a separate TOS agreement or a marketing agreement.

When Other Users Steal Your Content

A separate problem is other users taking and stealing your content. Here, you may have a more difficult problem because the social media companies cannot be held liable for the theft or misuse of your IP by other users. They do have an obligation to remove copyrighted content, if you notify them of such misuse.

Who to Sue?

But most of the time, we don’t copyright every picture, post or video we put online, and thus, the social media website has little obligation to do anything.

That includes giving you the identifying information for the person misusing or copying your content; oftentimes the company will object, and it is up to a judge whether or not to compel the company to prove you with the identifying information of the person infringing on your content.

Protecting What You Post

Sometimes, we post real works of art—things we create or photographic pictures or something that is, genuinely, artwork. Using watermarks can be helpful, as can a statement that claims copyright ownership with a date. While these can’t absolutely prevent someone from stealing your copyrighted material, they may deter a thief, and can strengthen your case when you ask the social media provider to take the infringing content down.

You may want to consider any content of value—imagine, an educational course, or tips to help someone start a business—be “on request,” whereby someone emails you or signs up to get the content directly emailed, as opposed to posting the content directly online.

Has your IP been stolen on social media, or elsewhere? Our West Palm Beach commercial litigation lawyers at Pike & Lustig can help you with your case today.

Source:

forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/03/13/facebook-meta-upgrade-warning-for-iphone-android-and-windows-users/