Do you know the guidelines for submitting photos to Family Tree?

In a recent blog post, FamilySearch discussed the guidelines for submitting photos to the FamilySearch.org Photos program. The post, entitled appropriately, "Guidelines for Submitting Photos to Family Tree" These guidelines are not particularly new. They have been in place essentially the same since the program was initiated. The key guideline is listed down in the content in the Terms of Use section No. 4:

Licenses and Rights Granted to Us. By submitting content to FamilySearch, you grant FamilySearch an unrestricted, fully paid-up, royalty-free, worldwide, and perpetual license to use any and all information, content, and other materials (collectively, “Contributed Data”) that you submit or otherwise provide to this site (including, without limitation, genealogical data and discussions and data relating to deceased persons) for any and all purposes, in any and all manners, and in any and all forms of media that we, in our sole discretion, deem appropriate for the furtherance of our mission to promote family history and genealogical research. As part of this license, you give us permission to copy, publicly display, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise distribute your Contributed Data throughout the world, by any means we deem appropriate (electronic or otherwise, including the Internet). You also understand and agree that as part of this license, we have the right to create derivative works from your Contributed Data by combining all or a portion of it with that of other contributors or by otherwise modifying your Contributed Data.

All of that language boils down to the fact that if you upload a photo you have given an extensive and nearly complete license to FamilySearch to use the photo any way they care to do so. The simple answer to this is as follows:

DO NOT UPLOAD ANY IMAGE OR PHOTO FOR WHICH YOU WISH TO RETAIN ANY RIGHTS WHATSOEVER

Technically, if you created the image, you may have some copyright interest left in the image, but from the language of the Terms of Use, that is a very tenuous right retention. By the way, I have written about this issue before in previous blogs. I will probably have a few more comments about the policy on my other blog as they pertain to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shortly. See Rejoice, and be exceeding glad.. shortly.