There have been many stories over the past few years about copyright infringement on Flickr. To date most have been about individuals maliciously downloading the work of others to resell it as their own or companies using photographs commercially violating either the licensing restrictions of the photo or ignoring the need for a model release. What most remain unaware of is that Flickr fosters copyright infringement through their API. The most egregious part of this is that Flickr knows it. Even if done with out malice you can expect them to spin it that they do not foster copyright infringement through their API or, as you’ll later see, that they’re immune from being liable for improper use of their API because of their API terms of use.
6 months ago I realized that two applications leveraging Flickr’s API were ignoring photo licensing settings that every user configures in the “Privacy & Permissions” section of their “Your Account” page. Even now regardless of a photos designated licensing setting, whether Creative Commons or All Rights Reserved, these and other applications are publishing Flickr photos to 3rd party web sites and image files, high resolution if available, are being downloaded for reuse on personal computers. Worse still is that as recently as this weekend MyxerTones employed Flickr’s API inappropriately in effect making every Flickr photo available for sale as cell phone wallpaper for 2 days.
My first realization that there was a problem with how Flickr’s API was being managed was when I found a medium size version of my photo “Penny Harvest Rockefeller Center, New York” displayed on CoinNews.net in late December 2007 just after Christmas. I wrote the administrator of CoinNews.net immediately and found out that they were unaware of the copyright infringement. It was explained to me that they were just using a freely available plugin that enabled them to publish the photographic work of others from Flickr via specified tags. The blog plugin they were using, “FlickrRSS“, was pulling the most recent photos tagged with “penny harvest” whether designated as “All Rights Reserved” or not.
With in days of this discovery Dave Winer announced FlickrFan. FlickrFan creates a high resolution photo screensaver based on a user or a tag based Flickr RSS feed. Photos from the specified user(s) or tag(s) are downloaded from Flickr to a local computer without sensitivity to the copyright license chosen by the photographer. (See FlickrFan: A Heads-Up For License Conscious Flickr Photographers). I contacted Dave about this, but strangely he would only carry on a conversation through blog comments. He in essence refused my invitation to talk about how his application worked over the phone or via email. His comments created more questions than they answered. In the end it left me scratching my head as to who the responsible party is in such application development. Is Dave immune because he’s leveraging RSS feeds that pulls content in a set format determined by Flickr or is Dave responsible for constructing an application that properly factors in photo licensing information contained with in Flickr’s feeds and/or API?
To pursue the matter further I contacted Flickr in December via an email to their support team. My email went unanswered.
In early January I had the good fortune of taking part in a panel discussion, Media Web Meet Up III: The Producers, with Heather Champ who is the Community Manager at Flickr. I took the opportunity to let her know about this problem with either the Flickr API or how the API was being enforced. I was told that she’d get back to me as soon as possible. After a few polite email exchanges that spanned several months I never heard anything more from Heather on the matter.
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Then this weekend a Flickr contact (stargazer95050) let me know that my photo Out of the Gloom, which like all my photos has the “All Rights Reserved” license designation, was being sold as cell phone wall paper through MyxerTones.com. It turns out everyone’s Flickr photos were available for purchase through MyxerTones.com from July 3rd to July 5th, but Myxer disabled their Flickr integration after receiving numerous complaints. Myk Willis of Myxer addressed the growing chorus of concerned Flickr photographers aware of their Flickr integration gone wrong this past Saturday apologizing and explaining the situation from his perspective.
This latest incident is by far the most egregious, as the use of photographs from Flickr were being sold with out the consent of a single photographer, all while photo licensing terms were programmatically ignored. I’m glad to see that Myxer took the proper steps to disable their Flickr integration, but this is the latest example of Flickr playing with fire. On some varying level it is easy to point the finger at Myxer, Dave Winer (author of FlickrFan), Eightface (the company behind FlickrRSS) or any other developer/company for improperly using the Flickr API, but I would argue that responsibility ultimately lies with Flickr.
Flickr controls their API and they control who uses their API. They issue API keys and supposedly monitor who they give these keys to whether companies like Myxer, independent software developers like Dave Winer or blog plugin developers like Eightface. Flickr even goes so far as to provide Terms of Use for their API and the do their best to place responsibility of recognizing image licensing terms on the developers using the Flickr API.
Section 1a, sub-section ii
Comply with any requirements or restrictions imposed on usage of the photos by their respective owners. Remember, Flickr doesn’t own the images – Flickr users do. Although the Flickr APIs can be used to provide you with access to Flickr user photos, neither Flickr’s provision of the Flickr APIs to you nor your use of the Flickr APIs override the photo owners’ requirements and restrictions, which may include “all rights reserved” notices (attached to each photo by default when uploaded to Flickr), Creative Commons licenses or other terms and conditions that may be agreed upon between you and the owners. In ALL cases, you are solely responsible for making use of Flickr photos in compliance with the photo owners’ requirements or restrictions. If you use Flickr photos for a commercial purpose, the photos must be marked with a Creative Commons license that allows for such use, unless otherwise agreed upon between you and the owner. You can read more about this here: www.creativecommons.org or www.flickr.com/creativecommons.
So why blame Flickr? Regardless of Flickr’s terms with the developers utilizing their API I have an individual agreement, as every Flickr user does, with Flickr. That agreement states in section 9b of the Yahoo! Terms of Service…
With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo! Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo! removes such Content from the Service.
Note the bold text “solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available”. This is a slippery slope for Flickr and Yahoo as I’m uploading photos on Flickr to share with friends and the Flickr community. No where have I authorized an all encompassing distribution of my photography to third parties. Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying Flickr should shut down their API. I employ services that use Flickr’s API all the time with out problem. I authorize Moo to print cards with my photos, I authorize that my Flickr feed be picked up by Twitter and I authorize the use of my web site photo gallery to pull photos from Flickr. In each of these examples I have authorized how my photography is used in line with my licensing terms “All Rights Reserved”.
In fact if you look at your Flickr Account page in the Privacy & Permissions section you’ll find that you can authorize who downloads, prints, blogs, and searches your photos from Flickr. In my case I have opted to:
- Let no one download my photography other than myself
- Let no one print my photos other than myself
- Make my photography available through public searches
- Make my photography available to be blogged.
In the examples I’ve provided counter to my Privacy & Permissions settings …
- Flickr RSS via the Flickr API has enabled others to blog my photography outside of the safeguards set in place through the “Blog This” button on each of my Flickr photo pages.
Note: Flickr RSS is often used to provide image thumbnails on blogs and I have no problem with this, but medium size photos enable a resolution of display that is too great less a photographers consent. - FlickrFan via the Flickr API and RSS feeds has enabled others to download my photography when I have explicitly stated that no one should be able to download my photographs.
- Mxyrtones/Myxer via the Flickr API has enabled a company to sell and make available downloads of my photography with out any authorization or agreement.
Taking myself and my communications with Flickr out of the equation… this is a known problem. Other application developers have become acutely aware of the problem of leveraging Flickr’s API while respecting the copyrights of photographers and the licensing terms they specify. As recently as March 2008 this very topic has been discussed in the Flickr API discussion forum (API usage and image copyright …).
When you read this previously noted thread you begin to enter the realm of finger pointing. Ask a photographer who they blame when their image is published inappropriately through a 3rd party application using Flickr’s API and they’ll blame the developer. Ask the developer in this situation and they’ll blame the photographer for making their photographs available. In fact most developers quite logically will state that photographers should turn off their Privacy & Permissions setting to make their photographs available through public searches. Unfortunately that only removes photographs from tag searches, but not searches across pools or sets. On the other hand the counter argument is, “Why should a photographer turn off the ability of their photographs to be searched because a developer isn’t capable of programming the proper logic to display photographs with the proper licensing restrictions?”
What both parties have missed to date is that Flickr is ultimately responsible to honor their agreement with individual photographers and to manage their API in such a fashion that the Privacy & Permissions settings specified by Flickr photographers are honored. I am personally disappointed that Heather Champ did not pursue looking into this in a more timely fashion. I have gone above and beyond in giving her an opportunity to address my concerns privately through several email correspondences and a personal conversation. Seven months is a lifetime in this day and age of blogging on the Internet. That being said I don’t let developers off the hook either when it comes to responsibility of releasing applications using Flickrs’ API. Although Flickr has ultimate responsibility in managing their API and subscribers, developers have the responsibility to understand the law and not break it. When a photographer uploads photographs to Flickr they’re not signing away their rights to their work for 3rd party developers to do what they will with them.
If you’re a photographer who uses Flickr I would encourage you not to wait 7 months as I have before publicly talking about this. The only way Flickr is going to address and/or fix this problem is by Flickr members letting them know this situation is unacceptable.
[tags]Flickr, API, copyright, infringement, Dave Winer, FlickrFan, FlickrRSS[/tags]
I have read though all of the comments, original post and associated links you all make some great points here. The discussion has me intrigued and worried about my content. I have to admit I have learned quiet a bit about RSS and API functions as well as flickr. I have always had my content restricted to whom can interact with on flickr. As far as extending my flickr content it was my perception that I had control over interaction; by that an entity had to ask permission and I would have to give that. I now realize that is not so. I also looked over all of the setting in privacy, profile, batch operations and pretty much everywhere else I could think of. No where did I find a way to exclude my photos if I choose to from RSS feeds.
I am not a Pro by any means, but that still does not mean that I don’t value my work. A few that have replied to this post think “Well you posted what do you expect” attitude, I have to disagree with that. I posted because I found flickr to be a useful tool to organize my hobby. I also have made a few friends and received valuable feedback.
I thinks what it all comes down to is that flickr need to improve security settings. Have looked into watermarking services and at this moment in time I can’t afford the cost for the amount of work that I have accumulated over the years.
I really think these are issues that need to be addressed by flickr, and I want to thank Jim for bringing it into the public light.
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@Rob02190 – I work for a photo website that is trying to help photographers protect and share their photos online. We offer custom text watermarking and are currently in private beta. If you are interested I’ll send you an invite (it’s free) – Krista at photrade dot com.
Jim,
I greatly appreciate you taking the time to bring this to all our attention.
The internet; Flickr, and Smugmug are ways I share my work.
Like many photographers and artists I want my work out there for people to see/purchase.
The internet offers a huge market. However, I find it sad that there are those who are spouting the ‘it’s the internet – get over it’song. I value my work and that of others, it has meaning. We should not turn our heads to people or organizations who steal and simply accept it as ‘the way it is’. I pay to belong to sites and hold them to their integrity.
The only way these organizations, websites will get the message is if people take a stand. Leaving a site won’t scratch the surface, it’s like going on strike with a conglomerate…strike one product and you’re still buying another. Artists, photographers need to make their voice known to make change happen.
I use all available options to protect my work and trust that the companies and sites I work with do the same. If they don’t I expect them to make it right. Flickr is what it is because of people like me and everyone that has posted images on Flickr and commented here. This is something they should take serious and address.
I really don’t understand all of this at all, however, I do know that I do NOT allow blogging of my pictures. I have found several of mine on different blogs and when I email the person that has blogged it, I get the response that they are using the RSS feed and that they have no control over it. They are simply getting the latest pictures from certain groups. Most of the bloggers credit the photo back to me, however, flickr evidently does not care about who they allow to blog or sell, etc. I find this very disturbing.
that is weird that you would even run into your pictures online…not once, but twice. but i guess considering what you are saying, it was a good thing.
Hrmm, lots of people seem offended that flickr publishes RSS feeds. To the people who are upset with this, do you know what’s in an RSS feed? It has nothing to do with your images, it’s a bunch of metadata and urls. Here is a sample snippet of an RSS feed from a recent upload to flickr. (Note you may have hundreds or thousands of people following your photos on flickr by using something like Google Reader to simply read your RSS feed.) The RSS feed itself has no image in it! It’s simply a bunch of URLs. People using RSS aren’t copying your photos, they’re just viewing them the same way they would if they went to flickr.com. And iirc (ianal), linking to any content is fine on the internet. Copying it is wrong, but linking to it without copying it is fine.
Snippet of whats in an RSS feed:
Treasure Island Night Shoot-16
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjwiacek/2644903703/
Mon, 7 Jul 2008 01:58:38 -0800
2008-07-06T23:11:51-08:00
nobody@flickr.com (gos81)
tag:flickr.com,2004:/photo/2644903703
Treasure Island Night Shoot-16
gos81
First I agree flickr should be enforcing the API. They know what kind of copyright you have so why allow those pictures to be accessed other than the meta (non picture) data. Developers (of which I am one) do see the limitations to what they can do with pictures. So I think both flickr and the programmers are in the wrong and very much vulnerable. But now here is my question.
Why don’t you just add a signature to each photo you upload. Granted someone can remove the signature but it will take some work and will probably not be worth their while cropping or removing the signature. If someone does remove the signature I would think you have grounds to sue them. Shouldn’t that put an end to flickr blatantly allowing the rip off of photographers?
If the Flickr API has a flag for what the copyright settings are for a given image, then it should simply not respond to\refuse a request via the API for a copyright or all rights reserved protected image. That shouldn’t be too hard to code.
Flickr ought to adopt an intentional ‘opt-in’ procedure for enabling levels of sharing. You should have to specify if you want family, then friends, then contacts, then everyone to view your images, and at which resolution, and you should have to choose to remove any rights, rather than having to choose to have them.
Adding a watermark feature such as Krista Neher mentions above is something else they could do, and again have it be something that people could turn off if they wanted to. I don’t think that would harm Photrade which has a number of other positive features going for it.
What a lot of people don’t get here is that Flickr assigns a key to a developer. They have a responsibility to handle complaints about those developers and potentially revoke the key.
Developers must act responsibly, but Flickr must police! They are ultimately responsible. It’s too bad, but it sounds like it may take a class action suit to get them in line.
Jim, you are right on the money on this one. I’ve been somewhat concerned about the use of my photos posted on Flickr since I started discovering some of them used on other’s web site. Clearly Flickr needs to get clear with their users about what is and is not going to happen to photos posted at Flickr.
I value Flickr as a way to let people find out about my photography and as a way to find out about the work of others. However, as valuable as this is, it is not valuable enough to get me to simply give away my work for free to whomever for whatever.
I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m removing my work from Flickr yet, but some time ago I switched to smaller versions of my photos and began adding watermarks across the face of the photos.
Dan
That’s quite a revelation! There are just TOO many sites which just stream content through flickr pools or through explore etc and they can use this content anytime for their own benefit.. whether it is sale or traffic to their own site!!
What really is the solution here? Can we share anything at all, without worrying about some kind of copyright violation?
Twilight; the answer, according to a lot of people, would seem to be no. The answer would seem to be that us photographers get our heads out of our arses and realise that the web is a place where, if you put things, they will get stolen. That this is a fact of life. What a shame. I am going back to using the web as a very carefully managed tool in promoting exhibitions in the real world. That way at least I can get to control who walks out of the room with a print at the end of the day.
I understand your frustration. But if it weren’t for the API the images would be pulled directly from the HTML site which isn’t that much more complicated. Any data uploaded to the web can be easily copied, redistributed and altered. No matter if there is an API or not. Any improvment has to target the way Flickr works as a whole.
If your image is part of the public Flickr image pool (not restricted to Friends and/or Family or being private completely) it is easy to grab a copy like the services do that track the explored photos, which – as far as I know – is a process of analyzing the explore calendar over and over again without any API call.
In my optioion this problem won’t be solved with a technological approach. Watermarking, limiting the size, denouncing the copyright violators and restricting permissions will be the only way to deter image theft.
A minor technical detail: You don’t need a developer account or API key to access the RSS feeds. The feeds are just another representation of the website compatible with aggregators like Bloglines, Google Reader or Outlook.
Apologies for my English, it is not my first language.
Alfie : you wont believe the number of ppl who just take screenshots of the browser and the image can be so easily copied.
Jim : Not only images, this RSS predicament extends to the whole blog world as well. There are so many sites which simply use the RSS feed of any sites, put it on theirs, put ads and earn revenue out of it! or if nothing, at least they build traffic for themselves.
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@Mike and @Twilight Fairy to be clear RSS feeds are not bad, but it is possible to make use of “enclosures” in which multimedia files (photos, audio, etc.) can be relayed. As with most things RSS feeds can be configured by the host site creating them. So while RSS feeds can contain content that some may not want distributed they are still a key communication channel that shouldn’t be condemned just for having the option to make use of enclosures.
What makes Dave Winer’s FlickrFan a particular concern is that the files are extracted from the enclosures to be saved to a local computer. That is extending the normal use of RSS Feeds. One day I hope to find out in more detail how Dave Winer actually pulls high resolution imagery from his FlickrFan feeds. Perhaps some day he’ll take me up on my request to talk about it.
Jim : no, the idea is not to condemn RSS feeds, they are a great tool in my opinion. The only point is, “sharing” also opens windows to infringement is what I meant. Take for instance google reader. Today I can share any post I read and I can also put up what I share on my page, drive traffic, earn moolah.. is it fair for the ppl whose writing or work I share? It maybe ok with some since they are getting publicity and it may not be ok with some again, who think they are well established and their work, is feeding some ads.
As for flickrfan, I havent seen it myself, but I do know that it’s quite easy to “calculate” the URL of any flickr picture’s larger size simply by observing the logic flickr uses in generation of its URL’s for all sizes.
Good discussion here, pinpointing most of the important issues.
I guess that we should first see whether Flickr is to blame for the situation. My take: yes, they are to blame – for having created a platform with the goal to distribute as many photos to as many locations as possible. That alone is not a problem. The problem is that they did not offer suitable tools to hand over control over the distribution to photographers. They do not offer suitable tools to protect images (e.g. by automatically watermarking them). They are strictly following an opt-out model, so that virtually anyone uses the default settings (which are very good for Flickr, but not good for the photographer). So, problems galore here.
Second, now that we think that Flickr is to blame, is there a resolution possible? Well, not too many. Certainly one can pull the images from Flickr (I did that, and I am quite happy about it). If you can not do this (for whatever reason), then you should at least protect your images with watermarks all over the place. Tag the images with a unique identifier, ideally in the image caption. This will help you to find infringers and go after them individually. If the problem continues to occur, we all should wait for decision on the Viacom-Youtube case. Should Viacom win (which is more likely given the recent rules ordered by the judge), we do have a valid case to check whether Flickr might be responible for infringing actions by their “partners” (API users) in a similar fashion as Youtube is responsible for the actions by their users. (OTOH, if Viacom loses this case, then forget about the protection of any digital content, be it photos, books, videos, or songs.)
Let’s face it – the value of an image goes straight to zero once published on the Internet. The situation is really bad, and the quick fix to this is to pull the images from Flickr unless you get serious business from having your images up there.
I think there are a number of [seemingly] inter-related issues here. Flickr clearly does not respect your wishes [expressed through your account settings] about how your images may be distributed. If I set my account so nobody can download large[r] versions of my images, I expect this setting to be respected, but I have found at least two situations in which it is not.
1] If your photo is cc licensed, Flickr takes the line that if you allow people to use your photo under a cc license by definition you’re willing to allow them to use the largest version available, even if your account settings clearly state otherwise, and
2] programs using the API are able to download image sizes which you have not made available to the public [and this is separate from the issue of whether the program is licensed to do so]. This is a clear case of a situation where a program using the API is able to get access to content that a scraper could not.
I think people either don’t understand [or more likely don’t care] that when photographers say “all rights reserved” they actually mean it. The fact that photos are misused on the internet does not ipso facto mean that misuse should be facilitated.
Some really good points being raised here. Dave: I think you were right when you said that people who are doing this dont care about the rights issues. They cant or else I would at least get asked if people wanted to use my work. Once in a blue moon I do but those are the exceptions to a rule that is dominated by people taking what they want with, as they see it, the impunity of “its on the web, its therefore shared, it’s therefore mine to do what I like with”.
Flickr’s API has gaps in it you could shoot a bus through. Plus, and this for me is the bottom line, it is assisting people in wholesale unauthorised redistribution.
And what do we get from Flickr? Three days of silence.
Goodness only knows what is going to happen when/if Microsoft purchases Yahoo.
This somehow reminds me of the situation when content controls (censorship, basically) was switched on for German (and other) Flickr users a year ago. There was lots of protest, but Yahoo/Flickr just waited it out.
Yahoo/Flickr does what it considers best for its bottom line, and if it has to disregard the user’s wishes, so be it. I lost a lot of enthusiasm for Flickr then (the users are great, the company is not), and this is not surprising to me at all.
Clearly if people mark pictures/sizes as not for download/viewing, they intend to have this respected by API-using applications too. If Flickr feeds this stuff to them, it is clearly because they have other priorities than their users’ wishes.
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This is a great article Jim and certainly highlights some major problems with flickr. Nothing that isn’t fixable though if the powers that be at flickr are willing to.
Recently a website run by Heineken Music has been taking a heap of “All Rights Reserved” from photographers through the flickr API – this is an example of a major multinational taking photographers work for commercial use.
I and a number of other photographers have put in claims for payment to Heineken and very soon after the website was shut down.
Maybe a petition from flickr users might force some changes from the flickr management.
@Dave great information in your comment. I was unaware of this facet of image handling by flickr. Very good to know.
By the way, did you know that Flickr removes the EXIF data from all images they create from the original? Yep, it’s true – just the original keeps the EXIF data and any copyright information contained therein. The smaller images do not contain any EXIF information at all. This makes the smaller images basically “orphaned images” if the image itself does not has a watermark in the visible area.
I never understood why Flickr did this as this can not be a technical issue. Rather, I guess that they are not too comfortable with copyright information being present in the images that are widely distributed.
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Didnt realise that about the EXIF. Is that ‘orphaned’ in the legal sense of the word? Cos if so, that could have some serious implications if that bill goes through congress in the States. So pleased I made the leap from Flickr this weekend. Have been wanting to for a while. Just neede the right, or wrong, motive….
Bloopy, thank you for the link to Thomas Hawk’s post. It is refreshing to hear this reasoned point of view from a photographer I respect.
http://thomashawk.com/2008/07/how-every-flickr-photo-ended-up-on-sale.html
Not sure I would call his opinion reasoned at all actually. He misses the point entirely as far as I and most of the people who have posted replies to his article are concerned.
…but that might be to be expected from the CEO of Zoomr.
This is something that Yahoo/Flickr could fix fairly easily if it is indeed the case that they have a flag for copyrighted photos.
They need to put into their API code that will prevent sharing through the API of copyrighted pictures.
They need to make sharing opt-in rather than opt-out.
They ought to add in watermarking as an option people can turn on.
They could even add in an option for watermarking for API sharing.
None of this would be too difficult to code.
It wouldn’t solve the problem of people pulling images from their browser cache (apart from watermarking), but it would cut down substantially on the massive sharing via the API of copyrighted images without permission or remuneration.
I like Flickr. I like being able to see other’s work and get their comments on mine. I’m not a highly skilled photographer (yet). I only capture amazing things when I see them and have my camera with me (which I try to do most of the time). I’m not the kind of photographer who can look at an ordinary scene and create art from it. Someday, maybe, it is a nice goal.
But I still would like to have my fair share from my work. I would love being able to pay for the hobby. A lot of people are in this category.
It would simply be “due diligence” for Yahoo/Flickr to make the above changes, protecting them from a class action lawsuit which could be devastating and certainly could deliver Yahoo into the hands of Microsoft (which not liking monopolies, and not preferring Internet Explorer, I don’t want to see happen).
I had heard of problems with Flickr in the past and thought that the copyright system they employ was a start to protecting my professional photographs. Now it looks like if we want to keep our photos on Flickr more needs to be done in the way of copyright protection and possibly watermarking as an additonal safeguard.
Alfie, I am not a lawyer, but I have my experience with such cases. Here’s how I understand the orphaned works issue: if the author of a work can not be located, it’s basically an orphaned work. Today, publishers may not use orphaned works. They have to look for other images. One way to identify a work is, for example, a visible watermark on the photo itself. Easy. Another way is the copyright information in the photo itself (visible only if you open the EXIF information). Soooo, if my original carries no watermark but a copyright information in the EXIF file, Flickr automatically alienates me from the work when creating the smaller versions of the image. Now, when someone downloads any of the smaller files, the carefully crafted metadata is lost. Forever. Furthermore, even the filename is altered. So Flickr does not really prevent the creation of orphaned works.
Steve – wouldn’t that render the whole API, in fact the whole idea of an API completely useless?
The whole bunch of you remind me of the music industry executives – they, too, are losing “market share” or “sales” through internet sharing and the more intelligent musicians are starting to notice that they can’t make money through records anymore, but through life concerts. The very same will have to be true for writers or photographers or anyone else who makes something digital. They need to find a (new?) way to make money from the experiences with the product or from personalization. Wedding or event photography springs to mind, photo journalism that sells unique photos right after the things happens and so on.
I know this doesn’t really have much to do with the Flickr API but isn’t that the underlying issue? Free sharing is the future, no matter if content creators (me included) want it or not. And it’s going to get easier and easier and more common every single day. “My” generation and younger (mostly younger. I’m old enough to remember 9600 baud modems) is growing up with an abundance of free of seemingly free content and making money from content the “old fashioned” way is going to go away. Even if Flickr is adding watermarking to their API or going from opt-out to opt-in.
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Yahoo management is in a chaotic state at the moment and the founders of flickr are on the way out. Couple that with your great post and it amplifies the issues you raise.
Some of the comments you’re taking issue with are also great, in particular, those from people who love flickr for its ability to get their work in front of a lot of people all over the world so fast. You’re right, if flickr/yahoo does it’s job, we can share safely. That’s the ideal. Getting there will be bumpy and there are bound to be problems. This API issue is one of them and thanks for pointing it out.
There is always going to be tension between the great leverage of sharing work on the internet with all the good that comes with it and not using the internet and instead sitting on prints which will only been seen by others in shows or in books or in magazines. I’ve been an artist long enough to remember the days when no one could see my work until I had a show and I only had a few meaningful shows a year.
Now, no matter what my medium, I can share my work every day with a lot of people and if I’m skilled at social networking using tools like flickr and other sites like it, I have a very powerful lever where I didn’t have one before.
I’ve been using flickr since it started and have had photography and writing on the web since there was a web. I’ve had a lot of work stolen over the years and I feel terrible when it happens and do my best to tighten things up and communicate with the entities that are doing the stealing. However, the number of people who can now see my work, some of whom are now customers of mine, is much greater than it would be if I were relying solely on analog tools for sharing: shows, books, magazines. If I quit flickr in a huff, the biggest loss will be for me. I’ll lose customers, friends, and a web tool that while not perfect, allows me to share my work with a very big audience.
I am sure the aggregious actions by Flickr will have severe consequences in the future. I am appalled at the cavalier attitude they seem to display towards others rights to protect their work.
I am far from a professional photographer ergo what someone choses to do with my meager submissions is of little consequence but for the professionals well that action is unforgivable and should result in legal and monitary action.
Flickr removes EXIF data to optimize bandwidth (it can take several kilobytes for each image). Legally speaking (IANAL), this has nothing to do with copyright – it is stated in the source (flickr website) that the work has All rights reserved.
As to watermarking, there are serious concerns for me and other people that find the marks outright garish and detracting from the picture.
I think the concerns about EXIF data are somewhat overstated – unless you have either programmed your camera to add a user comment that includes your copyright details or have otherwise subsequently added this to the image in post-processing [etc.] most images won’t have any copyright-related information in their EXIF tags when they are uploaded to flickr, so EXIF stripping is a moot point.
I think there is however a logic in suggesting to flickr that they embed three or four bits of info in the images they serve: at a minimum I would suggest the name/username of the poster, the url to the poster on flickr/whatever website the user specifies, © whatever year the photo was first uploaded, and details of whatever CC license is applicable.
If people really want watermarking I would suggest that they do it themselves [as Jim and I and countless others already do]. Be prepared however for a fair amount of abuse from flickr-ites who think borders and watermarks etc. interfere with their viewing/appreciation of your work.
Is there a thread in the thousands of flickr forums discussing this? It would be useful to have an ‘official’ flickr thread where flickr staff could [or could not] contribute, comment etc., as that seems to be their preferred communication mechanism.
@Dominik:
Yep, we photographers appear to be a bunch of whiners. But the problem is only partly related to a changing market. The complaints are mostly centered around the fact that our work is stolen more often, thanks to sites like Flickr. Yep, this influences the market, too, but you can not compete with thieves. The consequence of this rapidly changing market: mediocrity. As professional photographers can not make a living from their work any longer, they will look for other jobs. The void will be filled by average photos by consumers. (Then again, Flickr is evidence that there are very good consumers out there.)
@Vieira:
I do not buy the bandwidth argument. How much KB does EXIF information add to the average image? 2? 5? 10? Neglectible given the huge sizes of the orginals.
@Dave:
My cameras include automatically not only the serial numbers of the bodies, but also the author information in clear text. Very convenient.
BTW, ovfficial discussion can be found here – http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/76282/
Hi folks,
First, thank you for the blog entry. I suspect Flickr had bitten off more than they could chew, or would be willing to chew regarding image security, so I never put any of mine on there. I wrote my own code and run it on my own site instead. I don’t get the traffic, but then again I don’t have the hassles either.
Yahoo and Google and Microsoft don’t care about our copyrights, because helping manage our rights doesn’t make then nearly as much money as allowing others to get to the images. Their token nods to supplying some sort of IP security are really only there to make a lawyer happy, and maybe to deflect some of the damage if they get hauled into court in a class-action lawsuit.
For years I’ve split my time between full-time software development and running my own full-time photography company. Recently I was given the opportunity to help found a new internet community, only it’s designed from the top down for secured access – at the tightest level only those you allow in will be able to see your work. One of the things we’re implementing is a photo-gallery.
In our weekly staff meeting yesterday I talked about the brewing storm of IP/rights issues for photographers, and the impending closing of S2F.com. One of the things I want to do is gather ideas and hear your brainstorms for what would make a perfect hosting and image-displaying site for photographers.
I live the same nightmares, have fought all the same battles with infringement and theft, and want to build a site *I* want to use. Our team is interested in hearing your ideas, so feel free to forward them to my gmail acct… 8si.greg at gmail dot com. You can figure out how to unobscure that address. 🙂
Thanks for raising this issue. I went into the flickr api discussion you referenced and asked if anything is being done about this. Hopefully others will inquire as well.
I am disguisted to read this … this only validates how I feel mislead & became the victim of photo theft!
I thought I was SAFE, yet, I have experienced two types of theft …
One day I rec’d a Flickr message alerting me to the fact that a photo of mine, of MY child, was being used as avatar on an Orkut profile. She, being a protective Mom & victim herself, provided me the link & much to my surprise there was my little girl being exposed as some other person with a fake name & tons of friends! Argh … what was I to think?
“Is this for real?†I thought? Totally confused wondering how in the world did this happen! Looking at my daughter’s photo flipped & PS’d with someone else’s name was a surreal moment!
Never did I think that this could happen to me because of Flickr’s permissions, allowing or not allowing downloads, etc., I completely trusted them. My permissions were set to NOT allow downloading. I felt I was posting on a SAFE website … right? Owned by Yahoo … a reliable company, right? WRONG!
Though I was aware of the possibility that a small file could be created by right click/copy, I felt that a thumbnail, in no way, would be large enough for anyone to PS successfully. I was baffled.
It wasn’t until some “photo artist†contacted me with wanting to share numerous versions of his creations made form one of my other photos, again my daughter, that he told me he simply made a SCREEN PRINT … one that could be manipulated in PS creating a massive size file!
It all made sense … I was convinced, even with today’s technology, you cannot trust photo websites! There was absolutely no way to protect any of my photos posted on the Internet unless I controlled who was able to see my photos; therefore I removed my children’s photos from being public to only be available to those I allow as “Friends & Family†… an option on Flickr, which I highly recommend for all other parent/photographers to do.
I am very appreciative that I experienced what happened to me for it made me all the more computer savvy than I already thought I was. I use to think how great it was to share my children’s photos allowing anyone to see & appreciate not only my talent but, how adorable they are … every parent feels that way, I’m sure. I thought, what harm is there in others looking … it’s not like they could do anything with a thumbnail.
Boy, was I naïve … if it wasn’t for bratty kids on Orkut stealing my children’s photos to play their silly innocent FAKE game, & then the “photo artist†telling me about SCREEN PRINTS, I would have never become aware starting to think & wonder, nor will I ever know what creep has large files of my children’s photos saved on their computer!
AND TO THINK, NOW WE UNDERSTAND THAT FLICKR IS ALLOWING THIS!
@Mark Zanzig: In Flickr, originals are what their name implies: original. It means no altering at all, no rotation, no EXIF stripping, no conversion. EXIF is only stripped for the scaled-down versions, where that 5-to-50 KiB actually makes a difference. Thanks for the link to the official thread.
@Joy Elizabeth Effie: If it can be displayed, it can be copied. As much as Flickr tries to block theft, a user can always hit Print Screen and copy what’s on the screen. The story you told creeps the hell out of me, and I’m sorry you’ve been through this. But the only thing that can be done to prevent this is setting the permission level of your photos to family only. Don’t leave it open to public view, it’s a compromise you might not want to make. That said, I’m heading to my own account now to turn some of my currently public photos family only… I didn’t know such creeps were going that low on the internet.
@Mark: Everybody is whining at the moment. So that’s okay. 😉
Basically you’re proving my point – pro photographer can’t make their money with stock/generic nature/landscape photography anymore, because there are thieves and amateurs who are willing to give away ‘good enough’ work for free. (Just like an MP3 is lower quality than a good record – but it is good enough.) So they will look for other jobs – either completely outside photography or within other areas of photography where there is still money to be made.
Re:the EXIF data – the tools they are using strip the exif data by default. Given what a small proportion of their customers care about this feature they might just have given the “turning on exif for smaller files” a low priority. A company/project their size needs to prioritize tasks this way – a simple economic cost/benefit calculation.
@Joy: Every single web page can be used in the way you’re describing it. “Showing a file” means “copying to the computer” – just now when you opened this page, it copied all the content to your computer. This is how the technology behind the internet/web works and there will always be ways to exploit that. And nothing, ever, will be really safe on the web. That’s how the web works, not just Flickr. Google Picasa, the old Yahoo photo, even “private” Facebook photos.
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@Joy Elizabeth Effie, Orkut is owned by google and they may be great on somethings, they are still horrible on managing the problems between their users stealing content from flickr.
At the bottom of your flickr page is the RSSfeed link. If Flickr adds an opt-out setting for that then I think this problem will be a bit sorted. I agree they must have control on the APIs.
I suggested sometime ago about adding a program to add unique identifier to the images data and some tracking capability. Since that is too advanced for others to comprehend they just said something that basically say go hide your photos in the cupboard. Stock companies already used this technology, it already exist, why not make use of it?
Anyway, my answer to any stolen photo now is to send an invoice with the proof that my photo is on their pages. None paid me yet but they immediately took off my shots (after being blogged of course). Also, watermarking.
I am a fan of http://www.flickr.com/photos/shutterblog/ on suing ppl who steals her photos? she rocks!
This isn’t the first time I’ve read about issues with photo stealing from flickr, however, this article has led me to remove all of my tags on all my images and remove all my images from any groups I was in. I don’t have a lot of images on flickr and haven’t uploaded any images for months and will no longer be uploading images there. I have moved to smugmug and after reading this I am thinking that maybe I should upgrade there to the Power account to have copy write protection there. With that you can set images that if someone right clicks on the image the only thing that pops up is a window thats says “Copy Write by Mr John Doe”. No box that says save image or anything like that.
Is it fool proof? I don’t know for sure, but it sure comes across as a company that is looking out for it members, unlike flickr.
Just do what i used to do and use the save for web feature:
Basically upload the image via the save for web feature in Photoshop which is a smaller file then the original. Select a Colour profile specific to the Web and at a size of say 1000 max pixels (either Hight or Width) and upload
Your photo is safe, it is fine for web viewing and yes granted people may still download, but what they can do with that is minimal at best. It is not the original file, nor is it Hi-Res and alas if it were used for printing you would get little from it.
The original file then sits on your HD safe and out of the hands of flickr and anyone looking to steal it.
Prints? What the fuck, flickr is hardly the best option, so really in my opinion no one should be looking to use this anyway, i mean shit for the same shit quality you might as well pop down to boots or some other store that have those print machines and get some prints done of that.
No, If your looking to sell prints you would use a much better source.
That was my “work around” to avoid any mishaps with my photos on flickr, I have since just removed them all entirely.