Is this legal?

SparkySpitfire

There is a facebook page whose main focus is to show photos from a town's past for everyone's viewing pleasure.

The photos come from kind people who submit them so they reach a larger audience - someone might spot their mum at a dinner dance etc. Without the submissions there would be no page.

This page existed in harmony until they decided to ask local businesses to "sponsor" posts. But not through the proper channel of Facebook sponsoring. They're making arrangements through email.

Basically what they're doing now, is taking photo submissions and tacking on a giant ad at the bottom, so the size of the photos is reduced so you can't see them as well anymore.

I know there's no illegality with the photos themselves, because they're willingly given.

But I remember reading on here a while ago that the tax were starting to target "facebook businesses" as they weren't being declared. My question is, would this be counted as such?

The people who run the page are very...tough to say the least. Any opposition to their new scheme has been deleted and no one will set up anything to rival them for fear of retribution. It's a small town.

hullaballoo

I don't see anything wrong with that? It's a business opportunity. It's probably against the facebook Ts&Cs, which no one has ever read but that doesn't make it illegal.

There might be something in the fact that the people running the page are liable to dish out "retribution" if someone else sets up a page on the same lines might infer some criminal act but I don't see how.

If someone else wanted to set up the same page, with a similar or even almost exactly the same name, they are perfectly capable of doing so and if they're in any way competent at using facebook, they should be able to do so without revealing their identity. People would then migrate to the other page, which presumably would have the ad-free larger images.

The only other potential aspect in all of this is copyright but I think facebook also claim that they own everything including your words and feelings so I'm not sure how far you'd get with that either.

Peregrinus

SparkySpitfire wrote: »

But I remember reading on here a while ago that the tax were starting to target "facebook businesses" as they weren't being declared. My question is, would this be counted as such?

Yes, it would.

Mr. Incognito

You warrant that when you upload pics to Facebook you own the copyright grant Facebook a royalty free sub licence to use it. This ends when you delete the content.

I don't believe this extends to granting third parties a licence to exploit it for gain.

I would contact Facebook to alert them. Intimidation and bullying is certainly against their charter.

If as you say people are sending pictureshows in hardcopy form they know that they are being uploaded to Facebook. They would have to have disclaimed any commercial exploitation when sending them. Tricky and messy legally