Copyright and Social Media : A legal analysis of terms for use of photo sharing sites

Abstract: Before signing a contract, it is important to read and understand the terms in order to know what is being agreed to. However, it has been shown that this is not done to the same extent online. Even though users accept the terms of use for online services, the terms are rarely read, meaning that the user has no idea of what is agreed to. When it comes to social media sites, these have some sort of service for distribution of content, such as photographs. As these are considered creative works, they are most certainly protected by copyright. This means that copyright protection comes in question. As services are accessible from different nations, these need to comply with different kinds of legislation regulating the protection of copyright. The purpose of this study is to investigate the terms of use for specific online services available on the Internet for distribution of digital content and analyse the legal conditions in order to establish congruence with European and US copyright law. The sites legally gain rights to the content that is uploaded by the users. However, there seems to be some unclarity regarding the terms that potentially results in use of the sites that is not accepted. Further, there seem to be possible problems in protecting the moral rights of the authors due to the extent of the licences that is granted to some of the sites.