Instagram Can Now Sell Your Photos

Instagram has announced today that it basically has the right to sell your photographs without compensating you, much less notifying you about it. Naturally, this has caused quite the uproar amongst both users and non-users of the photo-sharing site.

This new policy comes three months after Facebook acquired Instagram, and will take effect on January 16th.

Facebook claims the perpetual right to license all public Instagram photos to companies or any other organization, including for advertising purposes, which would effectively transform the Web site into the world's largest stock photo agency.

[via CNET]

What this means in a nutshell is that if that place that you visited during your summer vacation wants to use your Instagram photos for their next billboard ad, all they have to do is cut a fat check to Facebook, and voila - the photos are theirs, and you don't get a dime.

Of course there are more fine details (and if you wanna dig into them you can right here) but I don't see this as being the best move for Instagram, especially with Twitter's recent announcement that they can make the photos you want to share look all cool and neat with their new integrated filter options too.

UPDATE: Instagram has responded to the internet's collective groaning about their new policy regarding the privacy of the photos you post. Check out what he said here.

How do you feel about Instagram being able to sell your photos now?