One of the long running scandals of modern journalism is how media organisations have misused social media.
Haitian photographer Daniel Moran’s victory over Agence France Press and Getty Images is a reminder to journalists and media organisations that when something is posted to social media it doesn’t mean it’s free to use.
Since the rise of social media sites it’s become common for journalists to grab images or videos from them to illustrate stories. At best, the media organisations have credited the sites they’ve stolen the content to allay copyright concerns.
The problem is media companies and journalists don’t have the right to do that; users don’t give away their rights when they post to Twitter or Facebook — they grant a license to the company to use those that content as they wish.
If a photographer, writer, computer programmer or musician wants to give away their work for free then there’s a range of ways they can do it and many are happy to make their efforts available to the community without charge. It just happens posting to a social media site isn’t one of those ways.
Hopefully journalists and media organisations will learn a lesson from Daniel Moran’s case, social media doesn’t mean open slather.