Hat Tip: Amateur Photographer
The image in question is one taken of soldiers posted at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and shows those soldiers standing duty during a storm. (It was taken by Karen Markert and can be seen at her Smug Mug site.)
The image went viral after appearing on Facebook and many web sites reused it without the photographer's permission. This includes Babble, a site owned by Disney. (It was removed from that site after the photographer contacted it.)
The key issue here is "after it appeared on Facebook."
The Facebooks terms allow for reuse of photographs posted on that site. If the image had been posted by the photographer, Disney and the other sites would have had the right to use the image without asking for permission first.
Unfortunately, it appears that the image was posted by someone else instead.
That person did not have the ability to grant the right to use the image, but there may have been no way for the sites that reused the image to know that.
This points out one of the dangers of using images found on Facebook. While the terms of service grants people the right to reuse images posted to Facebook, there is no way to guarantee that the person posting the image has the ability to grant that right.
The image may have been posted illegally by someone engaging in copyright violation. That person can not grant rights to use the image and anyone that uses the image faces legal jeopardy. (They probably aren't engaging in "willful" violations which limits their legal exposure to a certain extent.)
Two things to remember about Facebook images.
1) Posting images to Facebook yourself invites use of those images by others. From Facebook's TOS: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable,
royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on
or in connection with Facebook (IP License)
That is legalese for "We can do anything we want with the contents you upload" including granting others the right to use it free of charge.
Facebook has the right to grant anyone it pleases the ability to use Facebook content without paying for its use, and they basically do so.
Never post anything to Facebook you don't want to be reused by someone else.
2) While Facebook may grant the ability to reuse Facebook content, they can only grant that right if the person that initially posted also has the ability to grant that right.
That usually means the photographer when it comes to images.
Anyone sharing Facebook content should be careful. They should ascertain whether the individual that posted the content was the actual copyright holder. Reusing content posted by someone engaging in copyright violation will subject you to legally jeopardy as well.
A quick image search on Google is often all that is needed to discover the origin of in image when someone engages in image theft. Take a few minutes to protect yourself.
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