That says 'other than photos' though doesn't it?
That says 'other than photos' though doesn't it?
You know, you're right. I just read everything again a couple of times and this time through it seems benign.
I swear I read an earlier version that claimed Yahoo could use Flickr content for its own advertising and promotion but now I can't find it via Google (which shouldn't exactly be a friend of Yahoo's). And I could likewise swear I read about this on the ASMP website.
But I can't find it so now I am in the awkward position of, umm, being wrong.
Of course there are still concerns over Flickr and abuses where people swipe images, but those are at least considered illegal or in violation of the terms of use, those issues are not the action of Yahoo itself.
Anyone else care to clarify? It seemed that last year - 2007 - it was a different situation.
It would be interesting to see how the TOS have evolved.
Much ado about nothing...
A friend had a few of his Flickr photos stolen by a Fortune 500 company; the photos were subsequenly used in an award-winning ad campaign. When my friend discovered the theft he contacted a photo lawyer and, after months of negotiation, collected tens of thousands of dollars. Flickr exposure is a good thing. (His photos had been registered with the US Copyright Office and was told that this made his case.)
I was just searching for flights on travel.yahoo.com, and noticed in their section called something like "Today's Picks for DavidG" on my Yahoo!Travel homepage, they were using flickr images of the destinations. Each image had an attribution linking back to the photographer's flickr page, and the ones I checked seemed all to have a Creative Commons license.Originally Posted by Frank Petronio
Yeah but you actively choose to do the CC License... misguided as it may be.
David didn't assign the CC license to his own works, as I understand it above...it was someone else's works that were on his personal Yahoo travel page.
CC is an interesting concept, and Larry Lessig makes a case for it in his 2 or 3 very good books on copyright, but all told I believe he is dead wrong about 98% of the time in his views re the subject, esp re the individual (as opposed to corporate) holder of the rights.
I don't understand why an individual would choose a CC license that allows for free and unattributable use. I see a lot of younger generation kids (college age - 25) very in to the CC concept. However, I think that would change the minute they saw their photo in a major ad campaign by Exxon.
And as an aside, I think we all understand that Flickr is not to blame for anyone else's thievery. A corporation or other entity, individual or otherwise, can grab a photo from anyplace on the internet and use it for their own purposes if they are so unethically inclined.
Yes, that's right, but I took Frank's "you" as the generic "you," as opposed to me personally. I don't in fact use the CC license on flickr.
The images that were licensed that I looked at were generally personal tourist snapshots amid other family snapshots. After all, most people take images that look like the postcards, and they don't have to be super high quality to look good enough in the context of the Yahoo travel page, where they might have a cheap fare to Las Vegas and show a picture of the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign or a cheap fare to Paris with a photo of the Eiffel tower. I think they even want photos that look kind of amateur, because they look like the kinds of photos that their ordinary customers would make themselves when visiting those places.
Aside from my opposition to the entire apparatus of intellectual property from libertarian principles, it's also worth noting that traditionally, the internet has had a culture of sharing information, ideas, etc. There is a legal doctrine regarding property rights, that if you move in next to someone who has opened a factory, or who's playing loud music, etc, that you have no basis for complaint (seeing as how that was happening before you moved, and knew that was a condition). I would argue that applies in the case of the internet.
Then again, even aside from IP rights, I don't see why certain behaviors couldn't be insured by requiring agreement to various contracts. EULA's would seem to be just as legitimate without IP laws; it would just be a contract for performance.
PS: One example of something in particular that bothers me about IP. Take those field trips to "replicate" the work of Ansel Adams. While I think it is idiotic and dishonest (if the work is portrayed as one's own idea), should it really be illegal? That implies that one person has the "right" to a particular "view" of a piece of land/property, etc; while I would argue that the only thing one can have property over is tangible goods that can be homesteaded. Otherwise, we venture into the realm of "thought crime".
Last edited by dh003i; 6-Jan-2009 at 11:29. Reason: add PS
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