'Uploader For Instagram' App Asked To Be Taken Down, Nets Creator $6K

The 17-year-old developer behind the Mac app "Uploader for Instagram" was recently told by the social network to remove it from the App Store due to inappropriate use of their API. The suggested deadline for removal has passed, and as of yet there are no legal filings. Instagram hasn't followed up with the developer, and made no further comments about its demand for removing the app. Also interesting is that the teen has made roughly $6,000 from downloads of the $5 app since its release in early March.

Los Angeles high school student Caleb Benn is the developer behind Uploader for Instagram, and he says he came up with the idea for the app after having to repeatedly email photos to his phone in order to post them to Instagram. As you can guess by the name, the app simply lets you upload photos from the Mac desktop to Instagram.

Benn told ArsTechnica that on March 28th, he received an email from a "Partner Engineer" at Instagram, suggesting that he was not using the company's API in a permitted way, and that he had until March 30th to "fix" things. Benn said he didn't hear anything else from Instagram since that email, and no lawsuit was filed, while social network company didn't provide any comment to Ars.

The "Coders' Rights Project" from the Electronic Frontier Foundation suggests that making the app may have been within Benn's legal rights, however the EFF's legal director also notes that reverse engineering Instagram's API is against their terms of use. Benn says he plans to use the money he's made from Uploader for Instagram for college, where he plans to study computer science.

SOURCE ArsTechnica