Practical Privacy and Impractical Copyright

Vine provides a terms of service agreement, which links to the rules and a privacy policy.  Like a few other platforms identified throughout class presentations, a user must agree to these terms, rules, and policies to sign up, as you can see in the image below.

As a user investigates these agreements, a few interesting qualities can be identified. Vine’s Privacy Policy expresses that Third-party services, primarily Google Analytics, are granted users' information (Vine privacy, 2016).  One positive characteristic of Vine’s governance is that they provide a link to the page to opt out of Google’s demographics and interests reporting feature (Vine privacy, 2016).

While Vine provides users with this useful information, its copyright policy is a little impractical. The Copyright section of the terms of service explains, “Vine respects the intellectual property rights of others and expects users of the Services to do the same” (Terms, 2014). Vine also expresses that they are not required to monitor or control the content, which means that resolving copyright issues is accomplished through reporting (Terms, 2014). Vine requires a cumbersome copyright reporting format, which calls for the composition and collection of six pieces of information that are sent to a designated email address (Terms, 2014). This is likely due to the leanness of the application, as it is unlike the robust YouTube platform, which allows users to report copyright infringement through selecting options within the site.

In addition to this, Vine's share-oriented structure encourages sharing content that is not one’s own (Duguay, 2016, p. 8).  The sharing icon is prominent on the application and includes various options for how a user might choose to share, including revining.  It also allows users to easily make an audio remix for a selected video. Vine members often use the app for this purpose, which is why copyright conveniently remains in a bit of a gray area.

Duguay (2016) explains that “Its terms note that the company will act if copyright infringement is reported (Vine, Inc., 2014), but do not discuss exclusive content ownership in the same way as Instagram” (p. 8). Vine does enough to cover itself legally.  However, Vine's infrastructure is counterintuitive to upholding copyright law, in that it makes reporting copyright issues a trying task and it promotes copying.

Works Cited

Duguay, S. (2016). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer visibility through selfies: Comparing platform mediators across Ruby Rose’s Instagram and Vine presence, Social Media + Society, 2 (2), 1-12.

Terms of service. (2014). Retrieved December 1, 2016 from https://vine.co/terms

Vine privacy policy. (2016). Retrieved December 1, 2016 from https://vine.co/privacy