The Barclays Center Will Use Your Photos Without Paying, Or Asking You

The Barclays Center Will Use Your Photos Without Paying, Or Asking You

The Barclays Center opened 2 weeks ago in Brooklyn, and it's one of the most beautiful and exciting arenas in the world to date. It's a huge project that will make that part of Brooklyn very attractive, and will bring many sporting and music events to the area. But for fans and photographers, their Facebook policy might cause some anger. In a note on their Facebook page, The Barclays Center posted their 'terms and conditions' for uploaded content on their page. In this document, that 99.9% of their fans dont even see, they make anyone who posts a picture or a video on the page waive their rights for their work, and give full rights to The Barclays Center- which means they can use it for advertising, they can re-sell it to 3rd party companies, or for any marketing campaign they want to do for The Barclays Center. They won't ask you for your explicit permission, and wont pay you. They will just use it if they like it. Crazy.

Check out the full terms and conditions:

"By submitting your photo to Barclays Center’s page (including its Facebook wall) on Facebook (the “Page”), you hereby agree and consent to: Brooklyn Events Center, LLC and its affiliates, subsidiaries, agencies (including advertising agencies) and parents, the “Company”) using the submitted photograph(s), video(s), comment(s) and other accompanying materials (collectively, the “User Content”) for advertising, marketing, promotion and other commercial and business purposes in accordance with these terms and conditions.

When you upload the User Content to the Page, you hereby grant the Company (and its licensees, advertising agencies and promotion agencies) and the employees, agencies and authorized representatives of each and all of them (collectively, “Authorized Persons”), the unrestricted, perpetual, worldwide, non-transferable, royalty-free right and license to display, exhibit, transmit, reproduce, record, digitize, modify, alter, adapt, create derivative works, exploit and otherwise use and permit others to use the User Content (including, all copyrights in the User Content) in connection with the Company’s marketing, advertising and promotion of Barclays Center on Facebook.

By uploading User Content to the Page, you represent and warrant to the Company that: (1) you are of at least 18 years of age; (2) you own all rights in the User Content or otherwise have the right to submit the User Content to the Company; (3) the User Content does not violate or infringe upon the rights of any third party (including, any rights of copyright, trademark, publicity or privacy); (4) any persons identified in the User Content have consented to the submission of the User Content on the Page and further use of the User Content as contemplated herein; and (5) the Authorized Persons’ use of the User Content in the manner contemplated above and the rights and licenses granted hereunder do not, and will not, violate any right of, or conflict with or violate any right or commitment made to, any third party and no consent or authorization from any third party is required in connection with such use. You hereby agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless the Authorized Persons from and against any and losses, and all claims by third parties, resulting from your breach of any of the foregoing representations or warranties.

Lastly, you hereby waive, release and forever discharge the Company and each Authorized Person and each of their subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, managers, members, shareholders, employees, representatives and agents from any and all rights, claims and liability relating to the use of the User Content in the manner contemplated above including, without limitation, any claims based on the invasion of privacy, commercial use of name or likeness and the right of publicity."

Do you think its fair? Will this make you avoid posting your photos on their page?
I dont even understand how this can be legal.

Thanks to Avihai Levy for the tip Via Music Photographers.

Noam Galai's picture

Noam Galai is a Senior Fstoppers Staff Writer and NYC Celebrity / Entertainment photographer. Noam's work appears on publications such as Time Magazine, New York Times, People Magazine, Vogue and Us Weekly on a daily basis.

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25 Comments

I live right by the arena and documented the construction for the GC (Hunt) from the beginning. Damn right I'm not posting anything on their page now. That's just sick.

Crowd-sourcing...

Great information. It seems to me that Barclay's Center is shooting themselves in the foot. At some point this is going to blow up when they use a photographer's photo that shared it on their page without their consent. They will play this card and it will surely get ugly.

Easy solution...don't post on their Facebook page. 

Easy solution for guys like you who knows about their terms now. But what about all those who post there for people to see, but dont know about these hidden terms? 

Actually, it was my understanding that Facebook had similar terms in the early days...so I just never post the majority of my stuff on FB anyways.

They really don't, they only reason people think they do is because people like you perpetuate the myth because "I saw a guy online who knows a guy who said..."

Just so we're clear, this is what Facebook says:

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: 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). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

Also I found it troubling that you give them the permission to "modify, alter, adapt" your comments, videos, and photos. Scary

I highly doubt most people who go see games actually care for that at all. And pros wouldn't post on their FB anyway.

Pros are not posting their work on Facebook? Not true at all

 Read the Facebook ToS. In case you are senstive of your copyrights you won't do this for sure.

Plenty of decent and naive photographers will fall victim to this for the publicity benefits of posting to their page, unfortunately.  This is a huge issue for the photography profession with the advancement of digital photography.  I wish F-Stoppers would write an article on how we're essentially killing our own industry.

I'm planning on writing something that's similar, but about the live-music photography industry. 

I can't believe they can get away with this, but once company gets away with it more will follow!

Wel since you cant give away your copyright without actually signing something I am waiting for the lawsuits

Good luck when they get sued by a pro photographer who's work was 'shared' without their consent onto Barclays wall and Barclays uses it without checking.  I hope they lose big time.  The lines about 'content that you own the rights on' will not get them out of dodge.  THEY have the onus to verify it's clear before use.

so why  not keep posting their terms on their facebook page and get people to like it?

I don't get it. Have you read the Facebook ToS? In case you post a picture to Facebook you've lost your rights on your image anyway.

I think we just found a place were you should watermark your pictures before uploading. And as we speak of facebook, what are your (fstoppers) terms and conditions for images posted on your wall?

So i'm guessing more and more people will either post with massive watermark across their photos or just don't bother uploading photos to facebook or their fanpage anymore now...

Also what happen if one of their people steal a photo from a photographer and post it on their fanpage site (claiming its his/her's photos, pretending to be all innocent, bla bla bla) and then they use it for a big campaign? boy! that's going to go nasty! Cause anyone can make a fake facebook account.

says non-transferable.meaning they can't transfer it to somone other than their licencees etc  etc

of course, when you read the discus terms of service to post on this site, you get a bit scared about your rights and privacy as well.

I posted a link to the article via comments on the Barclays Center facebook page. Here is their response:

"We
understand your concern, Kaitlin, but we respect the rights of artists
and their work. The terms that this article refers states that we can
only use this content on our Facebook page and nowhere else. That is, if
you post a photo from a concert that
you attended at Barclays Center, we may repost it or use it in an album
on our Facebook page but we cannot use it elsewhere. Please let us know
if you have additional questions."

So what's the big deal??
When you signed up your facebook account, you handed Mr Zuckerberg most of the rights to your pictures anyway.
I find it a bit hypocritical to blame Barclay for actions that you agreed that Facebook may do anytime with any of your pictures anyway. With your written concent.