Instagram sued over contract changes

SAN FRANCISCO —

A lawsuit filed in San Francisco seeks to stop Instagram from changing its terms of service, saying the Facebook-owned smartphone photo-sharing service is breaching its contract with users. The lawsuit filed by Southern California-based law firm of Finkelstein and Krinsk claimed class action status and called on the federal court to bar Instagram from changing its rules.

The law firm said in the suit, Instagram is taking its customers property rights while insulating itself from all liability, which also demanded that the service pay its legal fees.

Changes to the Instagram privacy policy and terms of service had included wording that allowed for people’s pictures to be used by advertisers at Instagram or Facebook worldwide, royalty-free. Instagram last week tried to calm a user rebellion by apparently backing off the changes, due to come into effect from January.

Instagram co-founder and chief Kevin Systrom said in a blog post, I want to be really clear: Instagram has no intention of selling your photos, and we never did. We don’t own your photos, you do. But the class action lawsuit, filed in a district court in San Francisco, alleges that customers canceling with Instagram will still forfeit their rights to any photos that they had previously shared on the service.

The complaint said, The purported concessions by Instagram in its press release and final version of the new terms were nothing more than a public relations campaign to address public discontent.

Tens of thousands of Instagram users in the state of California are eligible to join the class action lawsuit. There was no immediate public statement from either Instagram or Facebook.