Facebook photos should not be used for news stories

Every time there is a tragedy, many newsrooms rush to the person’s personal profile on Facebook in order to lift a photo to use with the story.  In most cases, no attempt is made to ask relatives whether they agree to the photo being used.

I find this completely unacceptable.

There are those who argue that FB photos are in the public domain especially if no private settings have been enabled. However, I know of cases where photos which were private were passed on to third parties by so-called “friends” and were mis-used.  As for those who insist that by putting them on the Internet you are inviting the potential mis-use yourself, I beg to differ. Whatever happened to copyright?

This is a bone of contention which even Facebook administrators have not managed to sort out.  As someone with a legal background has pointed out to me, does the copyright belong to me as the person to whom the photo belongs,  or to Facebook?

In any case, I doubt that anyone who uploads their photos of happy times could ever imagine that one day their picture might be used to illustrate the story of their own death. Not to mention the pain being caused to the person’s loved ones.

What do you think?