Instagram has been hit with what appears to be the first class action lawsuit for a breach of contract, after it brought major changes to its service terms and privacy policy last week.
The lawsuit came after the photo sharing service introduced new Terms of Service last week, which prompted a user backlash in California.
In a proposed class action civil law suit filed in San Francisco federal court on Friday, Instagram was leveled with a breach of contract and other claims against the Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) owned photo sharing service.
“We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,” Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an e-mail.
Reuters reported that the lawsuit filed in U.S District Court argued that the proposed changes in Instagrams terms of service would “transfer valuable property rights to Instagram while simultaneously relieving Instagram from any liability for commercially exploiting customers’ photographs and artistic content, while shielding Instagram from legal liability.”
The suit filed in the District Court claimed that the photo sharing service is making a “grab for customer property rights,”. More on the lawsuit revealed that according to the proposed changes in its service terms, Instagram prohibited customers to claim their rights on the photos they had previously shared as soon as they cancel their profile upon a disagreement with ther new terms of services.
According to CNN, the lawsuit claimed: “In short, Instagram declares that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don’t like it, you can’t stop us,”
Another clause in the new terms of service also waives users rights to participate in a class-action lawsuit against the company. Few of these un-friendly changes invited a public up roar in response to which Instagram founder Kevin Systrom, reiterated the wording of the modified policy denying the company’s intention to sell user’s content to third parties. The company did, however, retain the clause about forbidding arbitration as well as ads with user content.
Instagram, which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them easily on the Internet, was acquired by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) earlier this year for $715 million.
