If i finsd out that any of my so called “copyrighted” images on flickr are being used by anyone else or god forbid being sold by anyone else there will be serious trouble !

I exhibited my work and sell my prints as one offs ! My images are NOT up for grabs or for sale by any stranger that decides to steal them.

Can anyone inform me of how to contact flickr staff directly ? How come its so difficult to do this ??? I am very dubious about this new flickr set up where most photos can be downloaded copyrights or not. Something aint right here people !

Rob

Not really defending one side of the debate or the other but how does it work that you decide whether someone’s copyright applies and at the same time decide whether someone can enforce a no photo rule (right or wrong) in their hotel lobby? Why do only you get to decide?

Myk Willis, Myxer’s CEO, recently wrote a post on his personal blog about our Flickr integration, and the creative and philosophical intent powering it. It can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/5bws7f

I encourage you and your audience to read it, if only to learn more about the integration, to understand that Myxer did not sell any of the photos accessed via the Flickr API, and to see what Myxer has learned from this experience. As Myk writes in his post, these are “trying times for a massive number of creative people whose footing has been destabilized in this era of instant, zero-cost distribution of digital content on the internet.”

We’re all finding our footing here, and we appreciate the insight you and other bloggers are bringing to the conversation. If you or your readers need any further information about Myxer or future iterations of our Flickr integration, please feel free to contact me personally.

Best wishes,

–J.C. Hutchins
Social Media Marketing Manager, Myxer.com
jc.hutchins@myxer.com

If you are great photographer and professional then stump up the money to create your own site, pay for the hosting and let the world come to you.

However most people are not that great or that focussed and love the publicity their images get via flickr. For many the very fact that flickr is so ubiquitous makes it attractive.

I make additional income from photography – I certainly don’t put my best stuff on Flickr, but I do post some interesting work.

I put images into sets and groups that I refer to from websites that I am creating to publicise events or locations and if people are ‘borrowing’ those images for their own sites then I know my what I am doing is working.

I fully understand the issue of copyright (having written numerous columns and articles about it) but I still love Flickr, becaouse it gives me my Warhol minutes of fame,

And no my car isn’t free, but 9 times out of 10 I have no problem with my pix being used for someones backdrop on a phone – even if it is supporting someones ad revenues. You wanna make a t-shirt though?, come and ask and I’ll see what we can work out.

Paul (pawtrait94 on Flickr)

And as you stated in your comment about listening to MP3′s, it’s great if you follow up and buy the cd, but have you ever contacted a photographer from Flickr and purchased their photos?

Jim, I’m not saying it’s “OK” per se or someone to download photos from Flickr. As mentioned before, technically it probably violates copyright.

But just because something is illegal doesn’t mean that it’s unethical in my opinion.

Have you ever listened to a song on the internet? Have you ever downloaded an mp3 from Napster or a blog or somewhere else online? Have you ever TiVo’d a major league baseball game without the express written consent of Major League baseball?

All of these items might *technically* be illegal but they fall under what I would consider ethical fair and personal use.

You bring up the point that I should be happy watching my favorites in PicLens. But you miss the point. PicLens still requires you to be tethered to a PC and is a whole different way to consume images than a Media Center PC. With a Media Center PC I can point my computer to a folder of my downloaded favorites (maybe even some of your images? as I’m sure I’ve faved lots of yours) and it runs these images as a full screen slide show while my music playlist plays in the background.

I’m not tethered to any computer. The computer is up in the attic and I’m accessing the media via an XBox 360. PicLens can’t do that.

While in a Disney/Mickey Mouse driven corporate world of copyright overkill I might again *technically* be violating a copyright, I don’t lose any sleep over it. Nor do I lose any sleep when I go on Hype Machine and click on the little play button next to a song that someone somewhere uploaded to the internet and listen to the song in a way that the original copyright owner hasn’t licensed as being “OK.”

That’s just me though. But I’d be surprised if even you yourself don’t violate copyright in small ways all the time that you might not even realize.