Instagram tests new limits in user privacy

 Instagram, which spurred suspicions this week that it would sell user photos after revising its terms of service, has sparked renewed debate about how much control over personal data users must give up to live and participate in a world steeped in social media.
In forcefully establishing a new set of usage terms, Instagram, the massively popular photo-sharing service owned by Facebook Inc, has claimed some rights that have been practically unheard of among its prominent social media peers, legal experts and consumer advocates say.
Users who decline to accept Instagram's new privacy policy have one month to delete their accounts, or they will be bound by the new terms. Another clause appears to waive the rights of minors on the service. And in the wake of a class-action settlement involving Facebook and privacy issues, Instagram has added terms to shield itself from similar litigation.
All told, the revised terms reflect a new, draconian grip over user rights, experts say.
"This is all uncharted territory," said Jay Edelson, a partner at the Chicago law firm Edelson McGuire. "If Instagram is to encourage as many lawsuits as possible and as much backlash as possible then they succeeded."
Instagram's new policies, which go into effect January 16, lay the groundwork for the company to begin generating advertising revenue by giving marketers the right to display profile pictures and other personal information such as who users follow in advertisements.
The new terms, which allow an advertiser to pay Instagram "to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata)" without compensation, triggered an outburst of complaints on the Web on Tuesday from users upset that Instagram would make money from their uploaded content.
The uproar prompted a lengthy blog post from the company to "clarify" the changes, with CEO Kevin Systrom saying the company had no current plans to incorporate photos taken by users into ads.
Instagram declined comment beyond its blog post, which failed to appease critics including National Geographic, which suspended new posts to Instagram. "We are very concerned with the direction of the proposed new terms of service and if they remain as presented we may close our account," said National Geographic, an early Instagram adopter.
PUSHING BOUNDARIES
Consumer advocates said Facebook was using Instagram's aggressive new terms to push the boundaries of how social media sites can make money while its own hands were tied by recent agreements with regulators and class action plaintiffs.
Under the terms of a 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook is required to get user consent before personal information is shared beyond their privacy settings. A preliminary class action lawsuit settlement with Facebook allows users to opt-out of being included in the "sponsored stories" ads that use their personal information.
Under Instagram's new terms, users who want to opt-out must simply quit using the service.
"Instagram has given people a pretty stark choice: Take it or leave, and if you leave it you've got to leave the service," said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Internet user right's group.
What's more, he said, if a user initially agrees to the new terms but then has a change of mind, their information could still be used for commercial purposes.
In a post on its official blog on Tuesday, Instagram did not address another controversial provision that states that if a child under the age of 18 uses the service, then it is implied that his or her parent has tacitly agreed to Instagram's terms.
"The notion is that minors can't be bound to a contract. And that also means they can't be bound to a provision that says they agree to waive the rights," said the EFF's Opsahl.
BLOCKING CLASS ACTION SUITS
While Facebook continues to be bogged in its own class action suit, Instagram took preventive steps to avoid a similar legal morass.
Its new terms of service require users with a legal complaint to enter arbitration, rather than take the company to court. It prohibits users from joining a class action lawsuit unless they mail a written "opt-out" statement to Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park within 30 days of joining Instagram.
That provision is not included in terms of service for other leading social media companies like Twitter, Google, YouTube or even Facebook itself, and it immunizes Instagram from many forms of legal liability, said Michael Rustad, a professor at Suffolk University Law School.
Rustad, who has studied the terms of services for 157 social media services, said just 10 contained provisions prohibiting class action lawsuits.
The clause effectively cripples users who want to legally challenge the company because lawyers will not likely represent an individual plaintiff, Rustad argued.
"No lawyers will take these cases," Rustad said. "In consumer arbitration cases, everything is stacked against the consumer. It's a pretense, it's a legal fiction, that there are remedies."
Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends. Facebook acquired Instagram in September for $715 million.
Instagram's take-it-or-leave-it policy pushes the envelope for how social networking companies treat user privacy issues, said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
"I think Facebook is probably using Instagram to see how far it can press this advertising model," said Rotenberg. "If they can keep a lot of users, then all those users have agreed to have their images as part of advertising.

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FTC tightens rules protecting children's online privacy

 The government announced tighter rules on Wednesday to protect children's online privacy by restricting the collection of data, like the child's location, unless parents consent.
The actions by the Federal Trade Commission mark an update to rules that were based on the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, developed when most computers were big beige boxes sitting under office desks instead of smartphones in backpacks, and online social media was unheard of.
"The Commission takes seriously its mandate to protect children's online privacy in this ever-changing technological landscape," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement.
Under the updated rule, IP addresses, which are unique to each computer, will be added to the list of personal information that cannot be collected from children without parental consent if the data will be used for behavioral advertising or tracking.
Location, photos, videos and audio files were also added to the definition.
Leibowitz said the commission struck "the right balance between protecting innovation that will provide rich and engaging content for children, and ensuring that parents are informed and involved in their children's online activities."
But Senator John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat and chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee, which oversees the FTC, said he had wanted legislation that went further.
"There are groups that will complain about it (COPPA being too weak), and so will I, but we can't do anything more about it right now," he said. "Children's privacy as far as I am concerned is an absolutely top line issue."
Privacy advocates and advertising companies had been watching closely to see if the agency would go through with a pledge made in August to add IP addresses to the restrictions.
Advertisers had argued against the move since several people in a family - adults and children - could use the same computer. Privacy advocates said it was needed to protect children.
Also under the updated rule, plug-ins and other third parties connected to children's websites and apps cannot allow third parties to collect information on children without parental consent.
Big companies would be able to deal with the changes but the tighter regulators could be onerous for smaller firms, said John Feldman of the law firm Reed Smith LLP.
"I represent companies who are trying to sell products and services," he said. "The bigger companies feel like they can deal with it. There are significant costs that will be associated with this."
Privacy advocate Kathryn Montgomery, who teaches at American University, said the update was needed, given the growth of social networks and mobile computing. She urged the FTC to be tough about enforcing the rules.
"The new rules should help ensure that companies targeting children throughout the rapidly expanding digital media landscape will be required to engage in fair marketing and data collection practices," she said.
The proposal also specifies that family websites, which are websites aimed at children and adults, would be allowed to screen users to determine their ages and only provide protection to children under age 13.
Currently, all visitors to the websites must be treated as if they are under age 13.
The FTC's rule implementing COPPA became effective in 2000.
The updated rule takes effect on July 1. It was approved by a vote of three to one with one commissioner abstaining.

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Vatican takes first spot in Internet domain name draw

The Vatican has come out in first place in a long-awaited draw to expand the Internet address system with new domain names that go beyond the usual .com, .org or .net endings.
ICANN, the corporation that oversees the Internet address system, announced this week the domain name .catholic written in Chinese characters will be the first bid it considers in a drive to expand and reorganize sites on the World Wide Web.
The same extension in Arabic letters ranked 25th in the random draw and the Vatican's application for a version in Cyrillic for Russian and other Slavic languages came in 96th.
Ranking high means the applicant could get approval early next year to operate the new domain and approve addresses using it. In the Vatican's case, Rome could then ensure only genuine Roman Catholic institutions get to use that domain name.
"This is a way to give a coherence and authentication to our presence in the digital arena," said Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
"Anyone looking online will recognize the site belongs to an institution that belongs to the Catholic Church," he said, adding the new, so-called top level domain names (|TLDs) could also help speed online searches.
.BIBLE AND .ISLAM
For online retailers such as Amazon, whose application for .store in Japanese came in second, early approval could mean a competitive advantage and prompt a quick introduction of the new name.
But the Vatican did not enter the draw for commercial reasons and would not rush to launch its TLDs, Tighe said. In addition, the main TLD it seeks - .catholic in Latin letters - ended up in 1,366th place and may take months before it is approved.
Website owners are now restricted to a few dozen TLDs such as .com and country code domains such as .co.uk or .fr. Many of the 1,930 applications for new TLDs came from companies, including Internet giants such as Amazon and Google.
Several other faith-based groups applied for other TLDs such as .bible or .islam. The extension .mormon was the next-highest religious application drawn, coming in at 118th place.
ICANN (www.icann.org), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has stressed that assigning a certain TLD does not imply any endorsement of the religious group seeking it, just recognition it is the best suited to use the name.
Tighe said the ICANN draw handled applications for TLDs in non-Latin alphabets first, which explained why the Vatican's Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic extensions came out far ahead of its main TLD in Latin letters.
INTERNET IMPRIMATUR
ICANN invited comments on applications earlier this year. The Vatican's application for exclusive use of .catholic drew criticism from members of several Protestant churches that also use the term, which comes from the Greek for "universal".
"This request is a move by a powerful group to squelch the voices and rights of other Christians," Dave Daubert, pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Elgin, Illinois, wrote on the ICANN webpage for comments on the applications.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, apparently saw no hope of a consensus on religious TLDs and opposed them all.
Some religions seem to have kept out of the fray entirely. There were no applications for .buddhist, .hindu or .jewish.

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