jrandm

I'm always shocked to read about how academia -- especially scientific fields -- punishes failure of the 'Experiment did not succeed' type.

My 6th grade science teacher was adamant that the scientific method is about testing, logging, and refining... While I get not working doesn't usually make for an interesting paper, isn't it important for scientists to share what doesn't work as often as what does?

Or have I just gotten the wrong impression from a few articles I've seen pop up on HN?

> 3. Create value for [...] people

Why isn't this higher on the list? I suspect there's far more people quietly kicking ass than making it by being a "personality" via their blog/podcast/twitch/whatever.

Instagram's terms of use and privacy policy are less explicit about rights to redistribute your content (than Twitter), but there are several lines like "Once you have shared User Content or made it public, that User Content may be re-shared by others." Most of their policies are about absolving them of any responsibility of what happens with that re-sharing.

They initially used her (public, tagged) photo in a photo gallery on the site, and requested permission for standard commercial use (print ads, signage, paid placements, etc). Possibly the reporter's questioning led them to begin to comment-request permission for any photo they pull, but I can appreciate a media team drawing a distinction between the types of usage.

The hashtag is only relevant in that it's reasonable you are drawing interested parties to see your photo, and the nature of a publishing platform means it's practical to expect that photo to be reused. I don't believe anyone could successfully argue a hashtag by itself is explicit permission, but the combination of publication, tagging, and no effort to control usage would seem to be some kind of implicit permission. Practically, as the site policy stresses, once the image is public it's outside of your control. (and without explicit denial, this incident's usage seems implicitly allowed)

Roundaboutly everything a business does is advertising, I'd draw a line between commercial advertising (ie: paid ad placements, physical displays) and content only available by someone actively going to a photo gallery on the website.

"You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

Tip: This license is you authorizing us to make your Tweets on the Twitter Services available to the rest of the world and to let others do the same."

That's pretty explicit, you don't have total control over it once you publish that photo, neither according to the policy nor in a practical sense.

I can see potential ambiguity in hashtags and wouldn't apply my argument carte blanche, but this specific instance doesn't have any confusion in usage.

My main concern here is that the positions are often reversed -- in this instance a company used an individual's content in a friendly, appropriate way, and did ask permission before any standard commercial use. Usually an individual is using a corporation's content in a friendly, appropriate way and is forced to desist.

I'd rather see more sanity in IP rights and look at specific instances than broadly apply some one-size-fits-none legal interpretation. I'd also rather the discussion be about practical concerns in (public) sharing on social media; any image tagged with popular terms and public is out of your control regardless of IP enforcement. My point is more that the chain of events is predictable and will continue to happen, so rather than attempt to enforce a virtually-meaningless copyright on a photo tell people this is normal and be mindful of what and how you share your content.

You are explicitly allowing them to reshare your image via the platform -- whether that's an embedded view, iframe, img tag pointing to the original, or copy with attribution seems academic to me. The point is you allow them to send your content on to other people, right?

They weren't advertising with it, the article mentions they did ask for permission before doing that. As-is all I'm aware of Crocs doing is taking an image that was published and willingly tagged to their brand and putting it in a public collection of similar photos. If I posted a picture of myself on every bulletin board I could find posing with [popular_brand] and labeled it with a big, flashing sign that said '[brand] LOOK HERE', is it unreasonable for that brand to share my image on their website? I don't think so.

But it's nothing like a pinboard with a group of friends. Instagram (I wrongly assumed it was Twitter) allows you to only share with friends; this post would be more like posting on a public bulletin board with a giant flashing sign that says 'CROCS(tm) PLZ LOOK.'

Hashtags are generic, certainly, but this usage was contextually relevant (with photographic proof) and clearly meant to represent that entity. Additionally, crocs is their registered trademark -- it's not unreasonable for them to search a massively popular image publishing platform for images their customers choose to share attached to their brand, nor for them to take those images and say 'Look at these happy customers!' in a non-commercial context (ie: on their website, in a photo gallery of customer photos).

I believe it's straightforwardly analogous to mailing the photo directly, though perhaps posting to every bulletin board in the country with a giant label might be a more exact match.

If anything a (public) hashtag implies you want it to be easily seen by the entity tagged -- or anyone interested in it -- as a tag doesn't specify an individual.

What's ambiguous about #crocs (which is a registered trademark) in that context?

I don't believe they should directly use other's content for material gain (in advertisements, essentially), but a photo/comment the creator willingly released to the public and attached to the brand logically allows for re-sharing that content to me, especially by the entity explicitly mentioned.

I wouldn't be on the business's side had this been a private account or even a blog somewhere, but she published an image to the public on a hugely popular platform and tagged it with the company's name. How is that different than sending the image to the company saying "Look at how cute my daughter is in these crocs?" Other than that millions of people could see the image prior to the company reproducing it.

"If you Tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet" https://support.twitter.com/articles/49309 - and first result searching for anything like 'Twitter hashtag'.

I think that's pretty clearly publishing and explicitly choosing to make your image/thought/whatever available to whatever you #mention. That does seem like granting permission for the #brand to share the content through social spaces. I'd expect them to ask permission before using it in "actual" advertisements (billboards, signs, commercials, etc), but anything shy of that seems like fair game.

The nearest thing I can think to compare it to (pre-Internet) would be mailing a photo to the company; what would you expect them to do with it?