When it’s not making you grow bunny ears and puke rainbows, Snapchat – or more specifically saved screenshots of Snapchat – could land you in court.
The UK’s minister of state for culture, Ed Vaizey, has warned Snapchat fans that taking screenshots may soon be considered “copyright infringement”, and could lead to spate of users suing each other in the future.
“Under UK copyright law, it would be unlawful for a Snapchat user to copy an image and make it available to the public without the consent of the image owner,” the minister warned. “The image owner would be able to sue anyone who does this for copyright infringement.”
Snapchat photos are automatically deleted after 10 seconds, although officially the app enables users to select time settings themselves before they post.
Mr Vaizey added: “The Snapchat privacy policy states that if Snapchat is able to detect that a recipient has taken a screenshot of an image, they will try to inform the original poster. However, Snapchat advises users to avoid sending messages which they would not want to be saved or shared.”
