(Paul Sakuma/Associated Press)

The stabbing death of 14-year-old Stefanie Rengel in Toronto on New Year's Day has brought some legal issues surrounding the Facebook social networking website into sharp focus.

Most of the media attention has been on Facebook users identifying Stefanie and her accused killers, in contradiction of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

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But another legal issue surrounds the media's use of photos of Stefanie that had been posted on Facebook.

Stefanie Rengel, 14, died New Year's Day in a Toronto hospital of stab wounds. Photos like this one from Facebook have appeared in news reports on the case. (Family Photo)

The day after Toronto police received permission to identify Stefanie, all four of Toronto's daily newspapers ran front-page photos of the girl. The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Toronto Sun used a hand-out photo provided by Toronto Police Services.

The National Post's front page featured a different picture, with the credit "Facebook." The other three papers also ran Facebook photos on their inside pages. On Jan. 3, the day Stefanie was identified, the local Toronto television broadcast of CBC News at Six also ran several pictures of her taken from Facebook.

Facebook does not claim ownership or copyright of photos uploaded to the site, but the company does have a licence to use the photos, as described in the Facebook terms of use.

"A licence is a legal agreement in which the party that has the rights in the photograph conveys certain rights to the licensee," says University of Ottawa professor and internet law expert Michael Geist.

Stefanie Rengel, 14, the daughter and stepdaughter of two veteran Toronto police officers, was killed on Jan. 1. (Photo released by Toronto Police Service)

Anyone with a camera automatically owns copyright to photos he or she takes (except in cases where professional photographers are commissioned or are working for a media company).

"The photographer has rights [to] the photograph. They retain those rights, but they transfer to Facebook certain rights to use the work," says Geist.

The terms of use for Facebook say its licence — which applies to any user content posted there, including photos, videos and text — gives it the right to copy, publicly display, translate, distribute and to create derivative works. But ownership of the photo remains with the person who took it.

You can't simply download a photograph from Facebook, or anywhere else on the internet for that matter, and republish it or claim it as your own.

Copyright law in Canada does make exceptions in certain circumstances, known as fair dealing. Fair dealing allows for use of copyrighted material for research, private study, criticism and review.

"One of the elements within fair dealing is news reporting. Where [the media] use the photograph, they might not obtain a licence to use it; they might just try to argue it's fair dealing," says Geist.

The copyright exception for news reporting isn't absolute, though. The Copyright Act says using material for news reporting does not infringe copyright if the source and author — in this case, the photographer — are mentioned.

"If it's part of a news story, and they're, let's say, capturing a screen shot of Facebook with the photograph in it, then I think they're relying on the news reporting [provision in fair dealing.] Where they're simply lifting a photograph that someone has posted on Facebook, I think that prior permission is likely needed," said Geist.

Another consideration for news organizations using Facebook photos is whether they actually depict the person in question. Anyone can upload a picture to Facebook and tag it with a name, whether that person is in the photo or not. The Facebook users themselves might not be who they claim to be.

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Of course, Facebook isn't the only place where people share their digital photos. There are services such as Flickr, Photobucket and Google's Picasa Web Albums designed specifically for that purpose. User agreements for these services are similar to those on Facebook.

"There have been cases, particularly involving Flickr, where photographs have been used by media organizations in ways not permitted by the licence in Flickr, and that's raised some significant concerns," says Geist.

In 2006, the Dutch tabloid Weekend reprinted photographs from the Flickr page of Adam Curry, a television and podcast host and former MTV VJ. The photos were published on Flickr under a Creative Commons licence, which allowed reuse only for non-commercial purposes. Curry sued Weekend, and the judge ruled that the tabloid would be required to pay 1,000 euros per photo if they ever reprinted them.

In 2007, an ad campaign for Virgin Mobile Australia featured a photo of Alison Chang, a 15-year-old from Dallas, taken from her friend's Flickr page, which was also published under a Creative Commons licence. The billboards read "Dump Your Pen Friend." Both Alison and the photographer are suing Virgin Mobile.

Geist suggests that users consider carefully before posting photos on publicly accessible sites.

"The starting point … is to think about what rights they want to retain and what rights they're willing to give up and what uses they're comfortable with without prior permission," Geist said.

Facebook, Flickr and most other social networking sites include privacy options that allow some control over who can see your photos.

For example, if you're part of a large Facebook network, such as one for a city, you may not want everyone in that network to be able to see your pics. Anyone who can see your photos can download them, e-mail them and repost them elsewhere on the internet, whether the law says they can or not.

Excerpt from the Facebook terms of use:

"By posting user content to any part of the site, you automatically grant … an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide licence … to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such user content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise. … Facebook does not assert any ownership over your user content."

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