Flickr; Comment Threats; IP Protection Marketplace
There was a story which has been buzzing around this week about Flickr. This is something that has always scared my wife about using Flickr. One of the Flickr’s users, Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, found that a company in Britain was printing and selling her work on Ebay without her permission. They gave her no royalties no credit, and didn’t respond to her lawyer’s letters. The only thing they did was stop using her images in the their Ebay auctions. Rebekka lives in Iceland, so there isn’t much legal recourse available to her.
What happened next was very interesting though. Rebekka posted about her experiences on Flickr (see the google cache of her Flickr post). She got hundreds (450+) of comments about it. It got dugg. Flickr deleted the post. She then posted about the deletion of her Flickr post on her blog.
What I find interesting is the reaction from Flickr and from the community. I actually think both were wrong in some ways. Let me explain. Flickr removed her post, which by my reading was reasonably innocuous. However, because the comment turned nasty (got dugg, need I say more). No company wants to get unnecessarily involved in people posting personal information and talking about revenge so Flickr, rightly, pulled the plug. Flickr is a community, yes, but it’s unfair to expect Yahoo’s sites to be soap boxes for threats. They shouldn’t have pulled the whole photo.
What amused me about the community reaction was the usual Scoble linking to a post by Thomas Hawk slagging off Flickr. I don’t blame Robert, he is just being a pundit. But Thomas, who I almost met last time I was in San Francisco, does this a lot. The disclaimer
about being the CEO of Zoomr, doesn’t stop him putting in a cheap shot about Old Skool membership from the get go. It really felt like another post about big bad Yahoo! making Flickr all crappy. If only we all used Zoomr life would be rosy.
I find it really disheartening. Yahoo! is actually turning out to be pretty darn non-evil as corporate go. I say this from the inside. As soon as you have a business worth losing you don’t let people start flame wars and litigation threats on your turf. What I don’t like is the usual mentality of folks who expect everything on the web to be a free for all. It just isn’t, and shouldn’t be like that.
I think the community needs to be less tolerant of threats and malice against individuals as I’ve said previously instead of coming down against web sites that aren’t 100% free speech. In the blind rage to lash out when the post came down, how many people stopped to think why?
Flickr too could have done better though. I know Stewart addressed the issue and I agree with his thoughts. However I think Flickr should also be more proactive against the kind of abuse of its service Rebekka suffered from. Flickr makes it possible to use an API to access all kinds of material which is openly licensed for non-commercial purposes. With the ease of access some people make wonderful mash-ups. Other people no doubt steal for profit. I would like to see Flickr set up some kind of market place for Intellectual Property protection. A base of action if you think you work is being ripped off from Flickr. Something international some someone like Rebekka has a chance of facing off with people on the other side of the Atlantic. Now that would add strength to a community of photographers.
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flickr, yahoo, thomashawk, intellectualproperty
, rebekkagudleifs, , RebekkaGuðleifsdóttir
