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# Who Owns Photos Distributed Via Twitter?
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/who-owns-twitpics/
- Published: 2010-11-17T15:00:27.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:03:05.000Z
- Description: A major electronic media copyright issue. Agence France-Presse is arguing that "Twitter’s terms of service allow third parties broad re-use rights to their content, and thus the photographer’s selection of this mode of digital distribution gave AFP a broad license to redistribute the photographer’s
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: Opinion, #image-position-hidden, Copyright, Twitter, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2025-11-17 09:23 (2009-2011)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2010/11/copyrightfuzzy.jpg "copyrightfuzzy")

A major electronic media copyright issue. **Agence France-Presse is arguing that “Twitter’s terms of service allow third parties broad re-use rights to their content, and thus the photographer’s selection of this mode of digital distribution gave AFP a broad license to redistribute the photographer’s images without consent from the photographer.”** *Yikes*.

The big issue for me is that Agence France-Presse actually LICENSED the photos they took from a photographer who tweeted images from the Haitian earthquake. The photographer is currently — and justifiably — in legal proceedings with the media company. What AFP did was simply wrong. Sadly, this is not uncommon. Last week, I learned that the photos of someone I know was snagged by a Chinese publication that slapped their own watermark on his images and gave him no credit. I’m not a fan of strict copyright rules, particularly since they usually favor corporations with the resources to duke it out in courts, but I do believe in crediting people for their work.

Here is an interesting [blog post](http://crlgrn.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/new-twitter-terms-potentially-impact-archiving/?ref=hyperallergic.com) from last year on the Human Rights blog for the Center for Research Libraries-Global Resources Network that outlines some of the evolving copyright issues that users of Twitter agree to when they sign-up for the service.

*via* [*Clancco*](http://clancco.com/wp/2010/11/11/photos%5Ftwitter%5Fcopyright%5Fsocial-media/?ref=hyperallergic.com)*, hat tip* [*The Art Law Blog*](http://theartlawblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/linkage.html?ref=hyperallergic.com)