How you use Instagram’s embedding feature may soon change significantly. In a statement to Ars Technica, Instagram said it doesn’t give people who use its embed feature a copyright license to display the image they’re embedding. “While our terms allow us to grant a sub-license, we do not grant one for our embeds API,” a spokesperson for Facebook said. “Our platform policies require third parties to have the necessary rights from applicable rights holders. This includes ensuring they have a license to share this content, if a license is required by law.” In other words, individuals, businesses and publications need to ask someone for a separate license if they want to share their content using Instagram’s embed feature. Failing to do so could lead to a copyright lawsuit. Instagram’s statement is likely to play a pivotal role in an ongoing case that could set a precedent for how people can use the feature. In 2019, Newsweek asked physicist and photographer Elliot McGucken to publish a photo he took of a temporary lake in Death Valley.
