However, if someone posts a non-Summertown image similar to one of theirs they shouldn’t complain. If Summertown keeps a description of what they altered and don’t make that information available to the customers then all the customers can do is complain, as Summertown doesn’t have to provide that info. It is up to potential customers to judge whether Summertown is improving images or poisoning the well.

Summertown Sun Publishing probably can’t enforce their copyright since the material is not worth anything and have instead they wasted their time harassing you through Flickr. Same thing with their claim of defamation. No false claims and no provable damages.

Flickr is just afraid of copyright infringements.

Stupidity is a common problem we all have to face, but not one that can be fixed. I wouldn’t be upset about any of this, clearly you can go on living without Flickr.

Let us hope that some enterprising contrarian takes this to the Supreme Court so we can all learn the law – and make any necessary repairs to it, if revealed to not actually mean what it currently says. Furthermore, it is axiomatic that federal statutes have largely occupied the field of copyrights and thus licensing contracts (in state courts) cannot be held to restrict rights that the federal statutes declared expired. On the other hand, “access” to copies (including originals) can be restricted by contract, as in “Please do not take any photographs inside the museum.”

I’d like to comment on some things posted here. In answer to the question about what photos I posted. I posted only b/w images and only the ones that had not be altered.

In response to Blake Caldwell saying: “if Summertown is modifying the images, and if that’s considered a new work that has its own copyright (which makes sense to me), then we’re getting hysterical here – they would have the right to complain.”

Blake Its pretty easy to see which ones SummertownSun alters as they aren’t very good at it. They usually just include lame stuff like dots added to a dress, a few hand drawn lines on a hat, etc. And while hand-coloring a public domain image is considered copyrightable, I don’t think adding dots to a dress is considered enough of a change to be copyrightable. Even then I didn’t post any images that had these changes.

In response to Douglas Hopkins saying: “When are First Amend rights superseded? When you have agreed to a contract that sets them aside. Those images appear to violate the US copyright law, as well at least 2 points of the Flickr user agreement. Many of us in the creative realm depend on protected intellectual property as a livelihood.”

Even though I got the images from them, their “licensing” terms have no power over public domain images. Only congress can remove those images from PD. The only ones they hold claim to are the ones they “altered”, and in my opinion, their “alterations” are a joke.

In the lawsuite: Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., (S.D.N.Y. 1999), a decision by the United States District Court ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright because the copies lack originality. Even if accurate reproductions require a great deal of skill, experience and effort, the key element for copyrightability under U.S. law is that copyrighted material must show sufficient originality. (info taken from wikipedia.)

A agree with you that copyright law protects creative people. As an artist I absolutely agreed with and abide by copyright laws. I did not violate copyright law by posting images that I got from SummertownSun because those images ARE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN. They complained about images that they didn’t do any altering to, I know because I was careful not to put any of the images up that they altered. Even though I don’t think their alterations would hold up as creative enough to warrant a copyright.

As for being accused of libel and harrassment: I have the right to express my feeling and thoughts about other people and companies. Its call FREE SPEECH!

First one is Migratr, which I’ve had a few problems running, but will backup everything. As the name implies, you can use it to upload photos onto a different photo-sharing website, which is really handy as a backup account.

Second is Downloadr. I haven’t tried it, and don’t know whether it can migrate photos, but is an alternative if Migratr doesn’t work.

There are photo-sharing websites that let you import photos from Flickr, including ipernity and Smugmug, but they require a bit of setup and cost money (ipernity has a free account option with some limitations).