> You're so off it's not even funny.

Nothing you wrote contradicts a single word I wrote.

Whether instagram is for profit or not has nothing to do with their agreement with their users. Copyright applies, no matter whether you upload your data to a free service or to a paid one. In the case of instagram, part of your 'payment' is that you sign away rights. If you're not comfortable with that then you should not use their service (I'm not, and I don't. Ditto FaceBook).

As far as the users are concerned instagram is a free service. If you wish to redefine the word free in creative, new and exciting ways then you'll be having a very interesting conversation, but mostly with yourself. We define words in a certain way so that we can have a meaningful conversation. Instagram is a free service by the generally accepted definition of the word free.

On their homepage they write:

"Oh yeah, did we mention it’s free?"

It seems as though your not in agreement with that, maybe you are talking about a different company, the one I'm talking about lives at http://www.instagram.com/ and does not have a paid program.

> Second, "voting with your feet" is what you do a priori. This suit involves people who already have a relationship with Instagram, have already shared their personal information, and are asserting that Instagram's new policies violate the understanding of the original transaction.

Yes, so they now have the option to remove their data from the service and to deny instagram the right to the use of that data. If they continue to use it (and I think that this is where there is a very subtle point of law involved, which is that you can't just retro-actively change the terms of service and claim that if people don't remove their data that they are accepting your new terms of service) then they are implicitly in agreement with the new terms. Obviously, there are some cases where this will lead to trouble:

- people won't re-read the terms past the point where they originally signed up on the off-chance that someone pulled a bait and switch (instagram specifically prompts you in their terms-of-service to review the terms periodically for changes)

- people may be incapacitated (or even dead) (instagram has a process for dealing with that)

- such retro-active changes may be illegal depending on the jurisdiction (but adding a clause about continued use past changes in the terms of service will certainly not hurt and of course instagram has just such a clause in place)

Whatever the case, the only way you'll get that settled is by suing them directly over an infringement of the copyright on your content uploaded under the original terms. Doing that pre-emptively is weird, ineffective and serves only one purpose, to give the lawyers that are promoting this class action suit free publicity. This will go absolutely nowhere.

Lawsuits over non-specifics that have not taken place, that you can avoid and that may never take place without specific damages are not good candidates for class-action.

> Third, yes lawsuits are a "cost of doing business" in the U.S. but comparing it to Switzerland is comparing apples and oranges.

For a multi-national this is everyday life. They compare the cost of doing business from country to country and this factors into pricing the product.

> The Swiss have far more regulation and government oversight of companies than in the U.S. European countries in general set detailed standards and guidelines for consumer products and services, while the U.S. prefers to handle such things through litigation.

Indeed. Whether or not that is the better way is up for grabs. But class action lawsuits on free services before actual infringement takes place is a load of bull.

The one thing that I don't get is why people are still surprised over things like this. It's par for the course, and has been for more than a decade now.