Flickr (stylized as flickr) is an image
hosting and video
hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in
2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in
2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed
personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to
host images that they embed in blogs and social media.[2] Yahoo reported in June 2011 that Flickr had a
total of 51 million registered members and 80 million unique visitors.[3] In August 2011 the site reported that it was
hosting more than 6 billion images and this number continues to grow steadily
according to reporting sources.[4] Photos and videos can be accessed from Flickr
without the need to register an account but an account must be made in order to
upload content onto the website. Registering an account also allows users to
create a profile page containing photos and videos that the user has uploaded
and also grants the ability to add another Flickr user as a contact. For mobile
users, Flickr has an official mobile app for iOS,[5] Android, PlayStation Vita,
and Windows Phone 7 operating systems.
Controversy
Censorship
On 12 June 2007, in the wake of the rollout of localized language
versions of the site, Flickr implemented a user-side rating system for
filtering out potentially controversial photos. Simultaneously, users with
accounts registered with Yahoo subsidiaries in Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong,
and Korea were prevented from viewing photos rated "moderate" or
"restricted" on the three-part scale used. Many Flickr users,
particularly in Germany, protested against the new restrictions, claiming
unwanted censorship from Flickr and Yahoo.[57]
Flickr management, unwilling to go into legal details, implied
that the reason for the stringent filtering was some unusually strict
age-verification laws in Germany. The issue received attention in the German
national media, especially in online publications. Initial reports indicated
that Flickr's action was a sensible, if unattractive, precaution against
prosecution,[58] although later coverage implied that
Flickr's action may have been unnecessarily strict.[59]
On 20 June 2007, Flickr reacted by granting German users access to
"moderate" (but not "restricted") images, and hinted at a
future solution for Germany, involving advanced age-verification procedures.
On 1 June 2009, Flickr was blocked in China in advance of the 20th
anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.[60]
Virgin Mobile ad copyright
In 2007, Virgin Mobile launched a bus stop advertising
campaign which promoted its cellphone text messaging service using the work of amateur
photographers who uploaded their work to Flickr using a Creative Commons by Attribution license. Users licensing their images
this way freed their work for use by any other entity, as long as the original
creator was attributed credit, without any other compensation being required.
Virgin upheld this single restriction by printing a URL, leading to the
photographer's Flickr page, on each of their ads. However, one picture depicted
15-year-old Alison Chang at a fund-raising carwash for her church,[61] for which Chang sued Virgin Mobile and
Creative Commons. The photo was taken by Alison's church youth counsellor,
Justin Ho-Wee Wong, who uploaded the image to Flickr under the Creative Commons license.[61]
The case
hinges on privacy, the right of people not to have their likeness used in an ad
without permission. So, while Mr. Wong may have given away his rights as a
photographer, he did not, and could not, give away Alison's rights. In the lawsuit, which Mr. Wong is
also a party to, there is an argument that Virgin did not honor all the terms
of the nonrestrictive license.[61]
On 27 November 2007, Chang filed for a voluntary dismissal of the
lawsuit against Creative Commons,[62] focusing their lawsuit against Virgin
Mobile.[63] The case was thrown out of court due
to lack of jurisdiction and subsequently Virgin Mobile did not incur any
damages towards the defendant.[64]
DMCA copyright implementation
Flickr has been criticised for its heavy-handed implementation of
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Under
the DMCA a service provider such as Flickr is obliged to delete or disable
access to content as soon as they receive an official notice of infringement in
order to maintain protection from liability.[65] After having one of his own pictures
taken down following an incorrect DMCA claim, comedian Dave Gorman researched the issue and concluded
that Flickr has two ways of responding to such an issue. If the Flickr user is
not based in America – or they are but the person filing the notice of
infringement is not – Flickr deletes the disputed content immediately. Even if
the user is able to successfully demonstrate that the content was not
infringing any copyright, Flickr does not, according to Gorman, replace the
deleted content. He argues that this is contrary to their obligations in
responding to a DMCA counter-notice.
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