What's Mine is Mine and Sometimes Yours...but only if I Say it's Okay

There used to be a time when knowing what was and what wasn’t intellectual property was pretty clear cut. Now with the advent of social media and persons everywhere posting, sharing , tweeting, tagging, and all the other terms for putting content on the internet, that right to the intellectual property you think is yours, just might not be. The lines are no longer black and white. They are definitely grey with a little light blue, red, and orange thrown in there because where laws pertaining to intellectual property and social media are concerned it’s a little, no a lot, fuzzy. Take for instance a case brought forth by a Facebook user in 2011 against Facebook. The plaintiff claimed Facebook was using his image without authorization in a particular advertising service. What was happening was the plaintiff’s friends would see his image in the ad section of their news feed because he, the plaintiff, had previously liked that particular products brand Facebook page. Essentially Facebook was using the plaintiff to endorse those product brands to his friends that he had “liked”. In the end, the plaintiff ended up winning to a point because Facebook agreed to settle. There were many stipulations made in the settlement, with most of them revolving around privacy issues and the use of minors’ information. Facebook also agreed to pay a certain amount to all users who could prove unapproved use of their image. The payout was minimal to each plaintiff, but that’s not the major point of this case is it? Twitter also has an issue with intellectual property violation. “Twitterjacking” is a relatively new term that describes when someone creates a Twitter account under the name of a celebrity or public figure and does not disclose that they are NOT that person, and tweets as if they are. This is such a new intellectual property violation that not many cases have been filed on the federal level, but are being handled on the state level. When setting up a business page, Facebook gives you the option to claim any or all other Facebook pages that are about your company, as long as you are the official representation of that company. Twitter allows you to link your company webpage to your Twitter account so whoever may see, can see you’re the official Twitter profile. We have yet to see the bulk of what intellectual property and social media will produce. By that I mean there will always be someone, somewhere who will be trying to bend the rules in their favor, whether that is social media companies or the users who love them. Many laws will be born of this issue and the end is nowhere in sight.