Copyright for Creatives

2.4 Social Media

Let's start with what is probably the hardest part to understand about copyright online: Even with no copyright symbol visible, each individual social media post is copyright protected. The only exception is if the post is simply sharing facts (including news stories); copyright protection does not extend to facts. Period.

Even if the person who originally posted it encourages others to share it, they're not releasing their copyright on it.

If you ever feel the need to challenge this, watch what happens when a company uses an individual's image without acknowledgement or permission. This is why so many companies and influencers reach out and ask when they want to share something. They know the game, and they'd prefer to be known for being a "good guy" on social media. (Actually, they prefer to not gain notice for stealing copyrighted material, but that's not all that dissimilar sometimes.)

If you want to join their noble ranks, make sure it's all right to share something you aren't the rightsholder for.

The problem is that social media is designed to share other people's material. For all social media sites, the original poster holds the copyright (unless they've posted something that doesn't belong to them or posted a news story). According to the terms of service for most of these sites, in exchange for giving you this space to post, they get a license to use that material...usually understood as allowing other site users to share that post within the site itself (which is why I try to find platform-native posts when I'm retweeting something someone else posted. As so many accounts post the same material across most or all of their platforms, it's pretty easy to do.).

The lesson here is to be mindful of what you're sharing, and to always note the rightsholder of the original post.