A federal court ruling suggests that most users making public Instagram posts lose some ownership rights to their photos

• In a landmark social media case, photographer Stephanie Sinclair lost her copyright lawsuit against Ziff Davis and Mashable for the online news company's use of one of her pictures.
• US District Judge Kimba Wood found that by making a public post on Instagram, Sinclair was making her photo available for others to share via embed, as it's within the social media company's rights to sublicense all content.
• Wood's decision could set a new standard in the complex history of online copyright laws online.
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In a landmark social media case, photographer Stephanie Sinclair lost her copyright lawsuit against Ziff Davis and Mashable for the online news company's use of one of her pictures, as US District Judge Kimba Wood found that by publicly posting a photo on Instagram users make their work available for others to share via embed.

Sinclair had sued Ziff Davis and its subsidiary Mashable for copyright infringement after she denied their offer to pay her for a photograph of a mother and child in Guatemala, and they then embedded the image from her Instagram into an article.

But Wood wrote in his decision on April 13 that Mashable did nothing wrong when it embedded Sinclair's post, because Instagram had "the right to sublicense" the image, as the app's terms and conditions state. Wood said that "because [Sinclair] uploaded the Photograph to Instagram and designated it as 'public,' she agreed to allow Mashable, as Instagram's sublicensee, to embed the Photograph in its website."

"These requirements pose no contradiction, and enable copyright holders to avoid unlicensed sharing of their work by choosing not to publicly post their copyrighted material on Instagram," the decision said.

The verdict comes just two years after a New York federal judge decided that news organizations did violate copyright law by embedding tweets with a copyrighted Tom Brady image into their articles, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The publication of an image on Twitter did "not shield" publications from a photo's exclusive display rights, the judge said.

Wood's decision may set a new standard in the complex history of online copyright law, but it also reminds Facebook (and Facebook-owned Instagram) users that the company acquires ownership of your content as soon as you sign up for an account.

• Read more:
• No, you don't have to publicly declare that Instagram can't use your photos — you already said yes when you signed up
• The EU has backed tough new laws to enforce copyright online
• Gigi Hadid says she has rights to paparazzi photos with an argument that threatens to change the way Instagram reposting works
• Instagram did a 'meme page purge' and suspended dozens of accounts with millions of combined followers, leaving some users without income

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