Twoku:  When business loses / customers, it runs the risk / of losing money.
Threeku: When money is lost / suddenly the business starts / listening again.
Fourku:  When business listens / it rediscovers its heart / and maybe its soul.
Fiveku:  Yesterday Facebook / They said Instagram could steal! / Today retracted.

The two Posts/Articles, which inspired this set of Haiku (Senyru):

1. On CNET, these reliable tech pundits published an article/blog post under a headline proclaiming, “Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos!” and goes on to state, “In its first big policy shift since Facebook bought the photo-sharing site, Instagram claims the right to sell users’ photos without payment or notification. Oh, and there’s no way to opt out.”  Pretty scary stuff from an artist/intellectual property perspective!! The article on CNET goes on to describe the various parts of the legal language, which explicitly and/or implicitly support this position – here’s the full article link: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57559710-38/instagram-says-it-now-has-the-right-to-sell-your-photos/

…and then, after 24+ hours of anger, furor, spew, bile, outcry, outpouring, backlash, boycotting, and outright revolt by  Instagram users, artists, lawyers, social media wonks, Facebook-haters and all other types of interested parties…

2. Instagram quietly posted a long letter on their Tumblr blog, which looked, smelled and felt like a “retraction” but was also–due to its timing and content–clearly a swift, fearful, money-motivated, dollar-driven, fearful business action, as if they were saying, “OMG–all our fans somehow figured out the legal ‘stupid test’ language we put in our new Terms Of Service & Intellectual Property Agreement, so we’d better backtrack and retract our ill-conceived plan immediately!!!!!!”  🙂  Here’s the Instagram blog (retraction) post link:  http://blog.instagram.com/post/38252135408/thank-you-and-were-listening

As this 24-hours of furor has wound down, others (many wiser, more articulate and/or funnier than I am) have weighed in, and begun the autopsy of this legal corpse.  And of course, being who I am, with a few minutes left to myself after an emotional event, I wrote five haiku…  🙂

 – The Haikook

P.S. as “The Haikook” is clearly a nom de plume, a stage name, you no doubt realize I have a real-life, an alter ego… So, when I’m not busy with haikunifications, haikugraphy and other forms of poetic foolishness, my other self is often posting pictures all over the internet, which do not have haiku/senyru attached or associated with them…and of course, one of my favorite places to share pictures is on Instagram, and through it also to Facebook, so this debacle of legal language, and intellectual property ownership rights really stirred up the beast in me!

So, if you have any free time (and of course you don’t, because, who does??), feel free to check out my alter ego postings as either Remages or Russ Murray, elsewhere:

• My “REMAGES” (Russell E. Murray Images) photo blog on Tumblr

• My Instagram (IG)“Remages” image stream, or:
  • Follow Remages IG via FollowGram or
  • View Remages IG via WebStagram or 
  • View Remages’ IG and more on Statigram

• My Russ Murray Flickr photo stream…

 

18 Dec This entry was published on 2012/12/18 at 7:21 pm. It’s filed under Business, Feelings, Life+Wisdom, Senses, Social Media, Technology, World Events and tagged business, customer service, facebook, Haiku, haikugrams, haikumages, heart, instagram, intellectual, intellectual property, language, legal, listening, loss, money, ownership, property, retraction, rights, risk, social, soul, steal. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.