Copyright issues on social media

Abstract

The purpose of the thesis is to determine how social media portals treat their users' copyright, and whether such actions are compliant with the national and EU law. In order to conduct this research, Terms of Service of four popular social media – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, were reviewed. As a result, it was concluded that users are agreeing to license agreements that are concluded between them and social media providers and by doing that, users agree to license all their copyright protected works to the social media providers under non-exclusive licenses. The author concludes that such licensing is not compliant with the national law and therefore Terms of Service copyright clauses are void. In addition, it is also concluded that social media actions in regard of users’ copyright are not compliant with fundamental human rights to the property and private life