FetLife has implemented a new policy regarding photographs and pictures hosted on its servers. They have started sending emails to members, demanding proof that the member owns the rights to post every single picture in their albums within 7 days or risk losing every picture.


The text of said email follows:

I’m Jill, one of the caretakers on FetLife. We’ve been getting a lot of questions about your collection of pictures you have on your profile. In order to put those questions to rest, we’re wondering if you could please provide us with some sort of proof that you have the rights to post these pictures on FetLife. We’re looking for the following:
A) A statement from you, saying that you own the rights to the material;
B) Proof of permission from the copyright owner to post the pictures on FetLife (email will do), or;
C) Some sort of evidence that the material is in the public domain (Just saying that “you found it on the Internet!” is not enough… we need something a bit more meaty, like a Creative Content license.)
If you can please get back to us in the next 7 days we would greatly appreciate it. If you need more then 7 days to gather your proof then please also email us in the next 7 days and I am sure we can work something out.
If you found pictures on the Internet and don’t know if you had permission to post them to your profile or not, we recommend you just delete them. It is better being safe than sorry.
Having said that, if we don’t hear back from you in the next 7 days we will have no choice but to unfortunately delete your picture collection.
Thanks for being understanding.
We look forward to hearing back from you.
Your friend,
Jill


When members have responded asking for clarification, and trying in good faith to adhere and comply, their responses are ignored and then their entire collection, including ALL of their personal photographs are wiped from their profiles.

This is unfair and unlawful. We are asking FetLife to supply the users with DMCA take-down requests for each and every photo they ask to have removed from that user's profile, showing the person who is claiming copyright ownership so they can either fight it or comply.

FetLife has always been a bastion of comfort and safety for members of the kink community, and we want those kinksters to continue to feel at home there, instead of feeling attacked and marginalized. While we understand that it can be quite disheartening to find your professional work posted on another person’s profile without proper credit given to you, this does not cover ALL photos that FetLife is targeting and removing. We want FetLife to follow the law, but we want them to start exercising sound judgement over which pictures should be removed, and which pictures should be allowed to remain on the user’s profile.

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