Website Owners may require Instagram Users’ approval before embedding their posts on a webpage according to a statement issued by the company.
A spokesperson from Instagram told Ars Technica that Instagram’s policies “require third parties to have the necessary rights from applicable rights holders. This includes ensuring they have a license to share this content if a license is required by law.”
In simple words, before you embed someone’s Instagram post on your website, you may need to ask the Instagram user’s permission for a separate license to the images in the post. If you don’t, you could be subject to a copyright lawsuit.
The announcement came as a rather unpleasant surprise to the websites that have been embedding Instagram posts instead of hosting them directly to prevent copyright claims.
In a recent event, Newsweek, an American weekly news magazine, was subjected to a lawsuit where a New York judge ruled that the magazine cannot dismiss the complaint of the photographer based on Instagram’s Terms of Service.
Until now, Businesses and Publications have been embedding posts from Instagram without worrying about copyright issues. This latest development could change this
Instagram’s current copyright page states that users have “the right to grant permission to use your copyrighted work, as well as the right to prevent other people from using your copyrighted work without permission.”
There isn’t any mention of exceptions for embedded posts.
