To date I’ve made two posts on Flickr:
* The Dark Side of Flickr: Photo Phishing By Corporate America
* Flickr + _Rebekka + Availability of High Resolution Images = Nightmare
Today I read about two more stories of photographers images being stolen and used for commercial purposes.
* A fourteen year old’s self-portrait being lifted off Flickr for use on a porn DVD
* In Germany a political party lifts a photo of a Flickr photographer’s sister as a cover to their political magazine
(Thanks for the heads up on this Nils)
Yet PDN’s story focused on the positive side of Flickr with the opportunities it has provided for some very talented photographers.
So which is the real Flickr? Clearly stories that can be sensationalized will get more press, but these stories about improper use of images keep coming.
Out of todays reading I did discover a new Flickr group “Copyright in the Works // Fight For Your Copyright“. I’ve joined and will be taking an active part. If you’re on Flickr and this interests you don’t hesitate to join. If anything it should be a good read as more people learn about it and report their experiences.
Update: Even better is the Licensing Awareness Working (LAW) group.
In all fairness though, it isn’t really Flickr’s fault that people take images that don’t belong to them. No matter what steps Flickr takes to protect online images, people who really want the image will be able to get to it.
Do I think it is right? No. In fact I just got in an “argument” with a friend of mine over this very issue. He said if you put it out there you should be ok with it…. my head about exploded with that. 🙂
But I also know that it is not Flickr’s fault if some unscrupulous person takes my photos. That being said, I don’t upload full size images to Flickr.
Flickr has created a community with use beyond its original intent. Flickr is responsible to keep up and provide its community with functionality that is needed to make the community safe and open. Flickr’s responsibility is to provide warnings, education and solutions to help their community feel their images will be used with the proper intent… in line with the business model that Flickr markets.
No company can keep another person from using an image inappropriately 100% of the time, but they can take greater steps to improve their security to minimize such events. Things thy can do would be to provide warnings, links to educational sites and technological & security improvements to keep higher resolution images out of the hands of others. Currently Flickr provides minimal protection. Smug Smug is a site that has great image security. They spent a lot of time to make sure that you can’t lift images easily. I’d say Flickr has a thing or two to learn from their competition and to take steps to educate their members to the risks of uploading and providing high resolution images.
The responsibility is shared. People new to photography need to learn about the risks and Flickr needs to step up their image protection scheme. Ultimately if someone wants to capture an image they’ll always take a screen capture, but access to high resolution images puts the photographer at great risk.
Oh man. That guy offered $250 to be on a cover for a publication, and was disappointed he wasn’t chosen. He’d probably be more disappointed to know how much he could have made at a stock agency for a cover.
I don’t trust flickr anymore after reading those stories about theft.
Richard I think Flickr can be trusted I just think they need to put greater safeguards in place. The odds of any of these situations happening to you or I, who have greater skepticism and experience with photography sales/licensing, would likely be far lower than with someone who is just getting into photography. Flickr in many regards is a frontier and it needs to be tamed.
Yes, frontier it is. I am a dueling gunslinger, as is the look of my website. 🙂 Where’s the review of Art Wolfe’s workshop?
Richard I have the review outline handwritten at the moment. I’ll have it online in the coming day or two.
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The political party stealing a pic from Flickr was in Norway, only the copyright holder was German. While our political parties are probably dumb and ignorant enough to do something similar, they are not to blame in this case 🙂
Thanks for pointing to the copyright groups at flickr. (dhania_)
Its bad that the one of the my favorites site Flickr is getting worse and worse. I think that they should take protective measures from porn, political and other bad thinks