Instagram, a photo sharing service that was recently purchased by social network Facebook, got a taste of its first civil lawsuit after the website controversially updated its service terms. After the changed made last week, many users and critics protested against what they believed was an invasion of privacy.
The lawsuit is a class action case and has been filed in a San Francisco federal court on December 21. The case was filed by a user of Instagram based in California who claims that the photo sharing site has breached its contract. Facebook spokesman, Andrew Noyes, responded in an email by saying that, “We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously.”
Instagram announced its new terms of service last week and the changes fueled speculation that the service would sell its users pictures to third parties without compensation. Another change that has prompted protests is a mandatory arbitration clause which says that users “waive their right to participate in a class action lawsuit except under very limited circumstances.” The previous terms of service will be in effect until the middle of January does not offer this sort of protection.
After the negative criticism, Instagram’s founder and CEO Kevin Systrom, took back some of the changes. A major change was that the company took out the words that stated that images would be displayed without any payback.
Instagram did keep the mandatory arbitration clause and did not remove its right to place advertisements in combination with the user’s content. The website also stated “that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such.”
San Diego-based lawyers Finkelstein & Krinsk are filing the suit and claim that customers that want to leave Instagram because of the new changes will have to forfeit the rights to their images that have been previously uploaded to the site. The lawsuit papers state that, “In short, Instagram declares that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don’t like it, you can’t stop us,’” the lawsuit says.
Instagram was bought by Facebook for what is now $715-million this year. The company has been making changes to the photo sharing service as it integrates it into the company and has been looking at ways to monetize the site.
Source: The Globe and Mail
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