There seems to be a trend where media companies (and I consider Flickr to be one) want to monetize content but not pay for it.

While I don’t think it’s illegal, given that we agreed to the TOS, I do think it’s damaging to Flickr’s community. When we signed up for the service, we acknowledged permissions as we understood them. We also acknowledged future usage, like these examples. Would we have made the same agreement if we knew then what we know now? Maybe, maybe not.

I would prefer the choice of opting in/out for any display outside of the Flickr site itself. Although I’ve changed my permissions to restrict blogging, it doesn’t seem to stop folks that I didn’t authorize from doing it. I imagine it may be due to some of the group policies where I share my photos.

Given the recent choices by Flickr & Yahoo management on how they can profit from my work or tell me how I must share it, I’m less and less inclined to renew my membership when it comes due in April. I enjoy my friends on Flickr and some of the communities, but I’m not a fan of Flickr’s policies or management anymore.

I have no idea if any of my photos are being displayed by Google, Bing or Apple – that’s the point that annoys me. I’d like the simple courtesy of choice or awareness regarding my photos. Flickr doesn’t seem to get it, though. If they do, they don’t seem to care.

It does fall into the same category as the recent issue with the Independent Newspaper in the UK. Same sort of thing in my opinion.

As Chris Nixon says though if I was able to opt-in or out for this specific use scenario then I would opt-in as in my opinion it is no different to flickr displaying the images on their site, but not having ever been given the opportunity I would not be happy about.

I can speak from personal experience – when images our firm had copyrighted were re-used as depictions of particular personalities on their website. The other side argued it was fair use based on the fact they were used as ‘reference examples’ (i.e. not used to directly sell their product) and that they linked directly to the source. The case was won in our favor initially, and on appeal. The other firm is no longer in business.

The fact that Flickr, and almost ALL of the Flickr API ‘users’, do NOT even seem to care about whether your images are All Rights Reserved or not (remember the LA Times Slideshow?) is why myself and many of our colleagues no longer use the website. While we understand copyright infringement is actually quite commonplace, we refuse to use a service that won’t even help its own source of contributions by recognizing an author’s rights.