Twitpic, a photo uploading service affiliated with social networking website Twitter, courted controversy recently when it changed its terms and conditions to enable it to sell users’ photographs without their permission or passing on any of the profit.

Users would retain the copyright in their images, but the service, which has millions of account holders, said it could now pass users’ pictures to newspapers and magazines for publication. The announcement sparked outrage, with many users threatening to boycott the service, forcing Twitpic to revisit its amended terms and conditions, with founder Noah Everett saying on its website, “We recently made changes to our terms of service that caused some confusion for our users. First off, I want to apologise for that confusion and our lack of clarity. We’ve updated our terms again to be more clear, and to also show that you still own your content. Our terms state that, by uploading content to Twitpic, you allow us to distribute that content on twitpic.com and our affiliated partners. This is standard among most user-generated content sites (including Twitter).”

In addition to Twitpic, Twitter users can upload to the site using services such as www.yfrog.com and www.pikchur.com

Please click here for Noah Everett's full statement.