Copyright Librarian, LeEtta Schmidt, has written this helpful post about sharing and reposting on social media. We consume, save, copy, and share information all day long. Our online world facilitates this more than our physical world ever did. The ease with which we can post, comment, share, and re-post an idea is an underpinning foundation of what makes social media sites attractive and enjoyable. But when the idea takes the form of a photograph, sketch, poem, essay, or other original creative content, the ease can help all of us overlook the potentially infringing nature of sharing and reposting content created by others.
Copyright law in the U.S. was also constructed for ease of use in that everything we create, even emails, selfies, and rambling diatribes over Starbuck’s seasonal cups, is copyright to us as soon as we record it without the need to put a © symbol on it or register it with any government office. This copyright protection lasts the life of the author plus 70 years. Considering this, we can assume that most content online is protected by copyright law. What does this mean for sharing and reposting? Well, copyright law gives those authors the exclusive rights to copy, distribute, display, perform and make derivatives. And a copy online is as simple as forwarding an email, right clicking on an image and selecting ‘save as,’ or clicking that Evernote add-on in your browser and ‘clipping to Evernote.’ The exclusive right of distribution is similarly simple to run afoul of, just upload and share.
Before you get overwhelmed by that sneaking suspicion that the authorities might be after you, or, at least, watching your every move, a lot of sharing and reposting within social media sites is perfectly okay. Sharing links, because links are not a copy but a connection to the original material, is not considered copyright infringement (even though it has made news recently), and the way that Facebook automatically pulls in little thumbnails of what you link to has been established in copyright case law as a fair use of material (Perfect 10 v. Amazon.com, Inc.). Similarly, some social media sites require that users agree to terms and conditions that give the site and its users permissions to repost; this is how Tumblr makes sure that its reblogging feature can work the way its users want it to work.
The same Terms and Conditions that establish that users should expect their content to be shared, also require users to promise that the only content they are going to add to the site is their own. Twitter and Tumblr‘s terms and conditions both require the user to ‘respect the intellectual property rights of others.’ Copyright is an Intellectual Property right along with Trademark, and Patent. Similarly, by using Instagram, you are swearing that you ‘own the Content posted by you,’ and to Facebook you are promising that you ‘will not post content…that infringes or violates someone else’s rights.’ So, as long as the content you upload to the site is your own and your sharing and reblogging of material is within the same social media site, then you should be alright. The biggest risk of infringement happens when you or another user upload content that belongs to someone else. This illegal content, like all other uploaded content, duplicates and spreads by sharing and reblogging until social media develops the reputation among artists and authors for being as lawless as the old wild west.