Queensland Police: receiving a Facebook photo is like receiving a stolen TV
The detective fronting the media following the arrest of SMH journalist Ben Grubb has implied that reporters receiving an image copied from Facebook may be committing the same crime as receiving a stolen television.
Speaking at a press conference live streamed by technology commentator Stilgherrian, the head of the Queensland’s fraud squad, Det Supt Brian Hay, said:
“This isn’t about the release of information… for example someone breaks into a house and they steal a TV and they give that TV to you, and you know that TV is stolen and you apply it to your own use… it’s receiving stolen property.”
(Hay’s comment on stolen TVs is at the 42s point of the above video)
Hay’s comments came after last night’s arrest of Grubb, who was reporting on an IT security conference. He reported on an IT consultant’s comments about a Facebook privacy flaw – demonstrated by the consultant accessing private Facebook photographs.
The arrest raises important questions for journalists who often use images culled from social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Hay also claimed in the press conference that he had good relationships with “the majority of journalists across this country”.
He said: “It’s unfortunate when the eye of the police may turn the eye of attention to a journalist but no-one is immune. Not the cops, not politicians, not journalists.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Are they going to arrest everyone in Australia? If you’ve never received an email with pics pasted from someone else’s Facebook you’re either lying or you need more friends.
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Surely if he can only be charged over copyright in infringement. Unless he was literally handed a physical photo, in a frame.
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I think the TV analogy was not a very well thought out one, but there IS a valid point here. Even photos which are out “in the wild” are subject to copyright. But, if you choose to “lock” your photos and not display them publicly, then someone “breaks in” and steals them, or worse, uses them in media such as TV, print, web etc, then that to me is not only theft, but a violation of privacy.
If Grubb had an inkling of legal nouse, he would have setup a FAKE Facebook profile of his own, locked it, demonstrated it was locked, THEN break into it.
This may well be an important precedent.
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When did (alleged) copyright infringement become a criminal rather than civil matter?
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It wasn’t Grubb who did the demonstration – he just reported on a demonstration!
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Hey he’s a twat…. I’ve never received a photo like that because my friends wouldn’t cut and paste somebody else’s photos from facebook and send it to me…
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It’s not the job of a police officer to decide what is illegal and what isn’t. He / she enforces the law. Judges and lawmakers interpret the law.
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The home break-in is a ridiculous analogy. If your Facebook privacy settings allow your images to be viewed by all and copied, that’s tantamount to permission, in my book.
If someone hacks into a “friends-only” Facebook account and takes images, that’s another matter.
Anyways, doesn’t Facebook’s fine print say it owns all the photos posted there? That’d make this a case of stealing from Facebook, not the account owner.
Let’s hope there’s a test case, Fairfax’s lawyers get the journo off, and a sensible precedent is set (forever known as Grubb’s Law).
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@Miranda – DOH – yeah, sorry. My comments are now 86.5% irrelevant – please ignore this much of them, and I’ll go get my glasses!
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Should Haye be locking up every Australian with internet connection?
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Queensland rozzers being unacquainted with the law? Surely not.
They apparently don’t understand the difference between copyright infringement, privacy infringement and theft.
The Theft Act 1968 clearly states that theft requires an intent to permanently deprive the owner of the item stolen.
Since the photo is still intact on Facebook, no theft offence has occured.
Ben Grubb: 1; PC Knacker: 0
Copyright infringement is tricky as it rests with both the photographer and the subject, though the photographer usually has the stronger rights. Either way, enforcement of those rights is the responsibility of the holder under civil law in the first instance, not PC Knacker.
Ben Grubb: 2; PC Knacker: 0
Privacy issue has the strongest chance, but is a civil issue in Australia, unless tresspass or personal identity theft occurs. Since he hasn’t stolen their face or bank details, this requires the person involved suing Ben Grubb, with little prospect of success.
Oh dear. Final score – Ben Grubb 3; PC Knacker: 0
Sounds like the rozzers got confused by the highly misleading Copyright Theft campaign by AFACT. Silly billies.
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This copper really has no idea, and as someone said, has no business interpreting complex things like the law. Back in your box little man
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@ AdGrunt, I agree with all your points, I think the only case where their may be criminal case might be a fourth point and that is breaking into a ‘locked’ or ‘set to private’ facebook page to obtain said photos.
I don’t pretend to know enough about cyber-crime law, but I’d be confident there must be something covering hacking into someone’s private account that must be classed under criminal rather than civil law. I guess that is kinda what you addressed in point 3, but I dunno, I reckon their surely must be something in the law (criminal) about hacking into a personal account. If there’s not, then there should be. Wouldn’t it be akin to someone breaking into my PC and stealing important personal details?
Happy to have light shed on that, by people more knowledgable on this.
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Hey Bucks,
“Hacking” is covered under section 10.7 of the Criminal Code.
It’s pretty dry, but roughly, as Ben Grubb a) didn’t commit the act himself; b) couldn’t / didn’t use the information for personal gain; PC Knacker is going to have a tough time under criminal law. Would be interesting to know what his charge sheet lists.
The more paranoid in the room could consider that this is an oblique attempt to set an anti-Wikileaks precedent in the courts.
The situation that Ben Grubb is in, is not a million miles from where Julian Assange is, albeit the payload is a picture as opposed to 250,000 secret cables…
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@Anthony your friends sound boring.
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All the security guy did was guess the url of a competitors wife’s facebook photos.
Something along the lines of
facebookcdn.com/wifesfbid/photoid1
facebookcdn.com/wifesfbid/photoid2
facebookcdn.com/wifesfbid/photoid3
and so on… a few hundred thousand times until he got a couple of pics.
So essentially this security expert admitted to being a cyber stalker…, which come to think of it, is probably crime…
Many sites (including mumbrella) use Content Delivery Networks (CDN) to cache files around the world to save download time and bandwidth costs.
Facebook privacy settings just make it harder to find out where a photo is, they don’t really stop you getting to it, once you know where it is.
A copy of your private photos and documents are also probably on your ISP’s proxy server. If I guess the url to those items and I am with your isp, I can probably get them too.
As other posts have stated, it’s really a copyright distribution issue for Grubb and FFX.
Though the whole concept of copyright is almost dead anyway, since these days the cost of copying is about a million times less (and approaching zero) than what it was 300 years ago when the laws were made.
Zuckerburg is probably right when he says privacy is dead. If you can’t physically protect something it was never yours in the first place.
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Thanks AdGrunt. I knew there had to be some sort of Criminal law invloved. Yeah I get it doesn’t in this case because of what you mentioned, so was more curious from a general perspective as much as anything.
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The question that needs to be addressed is why do all these cases of law enforcement getting things so badly wrong with computer “crime” emanate in Queensland? What ever happened to that poor old Queenslander who was busted for uploading “child endangerment” material to (I think) YouTube – the video of the Russian circus performer playing with his kid? Hope he’s not rotting away in some Qld lockup somewhere… What’s going on up there??
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Thanks AdGrunt – you seem to have a good handle on this.
But I recently read a US story about a FaceBook ad campaign where theu used six genuine FaceBook usernames and their photos. These six individuals brought a case about using their images and names without consent only to find that FaceBook own the copyright to all the photos, posts, userids etc you use on their site. Do you know whether this is the case here in Australia or just the US?
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It’s nothing to do with Copyright. The Fair Dealing exemptions within the Copyright Act allow journalists to publish copyright material without the consent of the owner as long as the source is acknowledged.
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Thanks AdGrunt.
Knacker would have about a 0% chance of a successful conviction in this case. Facebook’s process and privacy policy would need to be examined in Court over several mind-numbing days:
Eg Friends have the right to view and print your photos under your contract with Facebook so when is a photo “stolen”? It isn’t if you uploaded it to FB – you have licensed it’s use too far already by doing so.
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Thanks @AdGrunt – any chance a journo could get an official response from Det Hay on the misinterpretation of the theft act as applied to digital goods?
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JG, that sounds like the closed use of you profile pics in some ads. This is user controlled by their settings. Facebook don’t have any copyright per se, but you do license them to use them as per your account settings. This is revoked upon deletion.
Fair use is a defence in a copyright infringement. This doesn’t mean the complainant couldn’t try if he optimistic. He appears to have made the complaint about the hacker under Sec 10.7.
To be clear, a “security consultant” at a security seminar got hacked for benign demonstration purposes. And reports it to the police.
I hope he has a day job.
I think Ben Grubb was overly co-operative from the transcript. I’m staggered the police seized his iPad. I trust Fairfax lawyers stamp on that.
The real nonce here seems to be the guy who was hacked. A fellow security consultant. He isn’t much good, apparently. Pride must be stinging him to report this to the police.
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can. of. worms.
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If you leave your TV out on the street for the council pickup, its anybody’s.
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