Category: Censorship

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Flickr Censors User Over Images of… Mannequins?

Montreal Adult Store Display Update: If you don’t think Flickr should censor photos of mannequins, consider digging this post here. Well I was disappointed to receive emails last week from one of my Flickr contacts James Doiron. James has been a very active Flickr user over the past several years and has maintained the incredibly prolific mannequindisplay photostream. To date James has uploaded over 25,000 images (mostly of mannequins) and has had over 3 million views on his photostream.

I’ve been collecting mannequin images myself for a few years now and have a set of 766 mannequin images at present. A distant runner up to James’ far larger collection.

I was disappointed because recently I’d learned that Flickr had censored 100% of James’ 25,000 plus images by slapping an adult rating on his entire photostream.

What this means is that James’ images are pulled from search and other public site areas of Flickr. He’s essentially buried on Flickr — persona non grata. He goes behind the Flickr wall of shame along with the many other pornographers that call Flickr home. James was obviously disappointed to see the resulting drop off in traffic from his images and wrote in to Flickr to express his dissatisfaction and hope to obtain clarification as to why his stream had been blacklisted.

Here is the email response that he got back from Flickr:

James

Hello, mannequindisplay!

This is an automatically generated copy of a help case reply:

————————-
Hello,

Content like the examples below from your photostream still need to be moderated.

www.flickr.com/photos/31376396@N07/3199683812/

www.flickr.com/photos/mannequindisplay/102386206/

www.flickr.com/photos/mannequindisplay/214518707/

-Terrence

————————-

Now the first thing to point out here is that the first image that Flickr is objecting too isn’t even James’ image. Apparently at Flickr now your own photostream can be held liable for what Flickr considers adult images in streams that are *totally unrelated to you.* The censors at Flickr frequently make mistakes though (just last month they permanently deleted a harmless video of some kids playing basketball for no reason) so let’s chalk their first image objected to as yet another mistake by the underlings in the Flickr Censorship Division.

But the next two images (one posted above)? Really? Flickr is going to classify someone’s entire stream of 25,000+ entirely harmless images as adult content simply because the prudes in the Flickr Censorship Division object to photos of mannequins? Are they joking? Alas, unfortunately they are not.

So what else does having your account labeled as adult mean? Well it means that nobody can include your images in a gallery of any kind. In fact, one of the first galleries I made myself was one of mannequins. I’ve been trying to do one new gallery each day on Flickr but I can’t include any of James’ 25,000+ images because Flickr deems them “too hot to handle.”

The trend of giving mannequins nipples has been going on for a number of years now. Walk by any Victoria’s Secret in America and you’re bound to run into them. if you are into mannequin nipples here’s a few that I’ve taken myself. You can pretty much find them in any mall in America.

Or if you’d rather see one from Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ’s stream you can find that here. Of course some might consider allowing Heather (Flickr Staff) to have uncensored images of mannequin nipples a bit of a Flickr double standard, but why should Flickr staff need to play by the same rules as the rest of us?

Even worse than mannequin nipples, you can find over 1,400 FULLY NUDE mannequins on Flickr simply using the search for nude AND mannequin. Why do these 1,400 people get to show nude mannequins and James can’t show one with covered nipples? Or check out these mannequins in bras and panties from the Flickr blog.

Part of documenting our world means shooting the things that are around us. Part of documenting culture is defining our culture through images. It disappoints me that mannequins, along with sculpture and paintings in museums, now have seemed to raise the ire of the underlings in the Flickr Censorship Division. Apparently that catchy new Yahoo! tagline about the new Yahoo! being all about you, only applies to you if you don’t take photos of mannequins, you freakin pervert.

James reflects more on his recent predicament on Flickr here pointing out some rather obvious points about mannequins here. (number one being, well, they’re not human) Unfortunately you will need to be logged into Flickr and dig deep into your settings to allow pornographic Flickr material if you’d like to read it. Sigh.

Note to Yahoo! execs, the next time you are thinking about layoffs and cost cutting, might I recommend you take a serious look at gutting as much of the Flickr censorship Division as possible. In addition to their cost (salaries/benefits/etc.) they create enormous negative ill will with your paying customers (like James, who is now considering leaving Flickr) and generate a great deal of negative PR for Yahoo! as well. You really gain nothing by censoring 25,000+ images based on a few relatively harmless images buried deep in a user’s photostream. That’s just common sense.

Update: James has posted on his plight regarding the censorship of his mannequins in the Flickr Help Forum here, Flickr has yet to respond to his post. That asshole Ian Sanderson though is quick to defame my credibility which is an especially cowardly act on his part in a forum where he knows I’m banned.

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Flickr from Yahoo! Censors Inoffensive Basketball Video, Calls Censorship “Error”

Why does Flickr from Yahoo! always want to hate on basketball?

Take a look at the Youtube video above. It’s pretty boring in my opinion, just a few guys playing basketball. Nothing to see here, right folks? Move along.

Apparently somebody somewhere from the censorship division at Flickr from Yahoo though felt that this video needed to be removed. The user who uploaded the video tried to go through the proper Flickr from Yahoo channels to figure out just why in the blazes somebody would want to delete his inoffensive video and what follows feels like a scene straight out of Abbott and Costello.

==== From Flickr ========

Hello atchang_2001,

As per our Community Guidelines, “restricted” video content is not allowed on Flickr . We’ve removed your video.

If you continue to upload videos that contain “restricted” content, we may take further action on your account.

==== From atchang_2001 ==========

Hi, could you tell me which video you removed (title or filename and the set that it was from) and what was the “restricted” content? On Aug 12, all I uploaded were a lot of videos of my friends playing basketball (pretty poorly I admit, but I don’t see how that is restricted).

Thank you!

==== From Flickr ========

Thank you for contacting Flickr Member Support.

The best places to refer for clarification on what is and is not allowed are the Community Guidelines and Terms of Use. We cannot reinterpret these documents but staying within the letter and spirit of these terms and guidelines is the best way to maintain a happy and healthy Flickr account.

==== From atchang_2001 ==========

Hi, can you tell me which video was removed (filename and what set it was in).

==== From Flickr ========

The video that was removed was the one that has violated
the Terms of Service.

==== From atchang_2001 ==========

Hello, yes I understand it violated your ToS… but I uploaded over fifty videos during the time frame in questions and it is difficult to be to figure which one was removed on my side.

Can you please tell me the name of the video that was removed. If possible what set the video was in would also be helpful.

==== From Flickr ========

Thank you for contacting Flickr Member Support.

I am very sorry but at this time, we can’t release this
sort of data.

Thank you for your interest in Flickr.

==== From atchang_2001 ==========

Hello, I wish this case to be escalated to a more senior representative in an effort to have this matter resolved. To summarize the situation:

1. On the morning of August 12, 2009. I uploaded several dozen videos of my friends and I playing basketball (videos have no sound).
2. A few hours later, I receive an email saying that one of the videos has been removed because it contains restricted content.
3. I wish to know what video was removed (the current representative appears not to be able to tell me what video was removed or why it was labelled as restricted).

Thank you

==== From Flickr ========

Hello atchang_2001,

The file that was removed was the one under file name:
CIMG0271

Thank you again for contacting us. If you have any other
questions, please feel free to reply to this email.

==== From atchang_2001 ==========

This video is of four of my friends playing basketball at an outdoor basketball court, it has no sound. Can you or a more senior representative assist me in explaining why this violated the Flickr Community Guidelines so that I can avoid this from happening again?

Thank you,

==== From Flickr ========

Hello,

To demonstrate that you understand what content in your
photostream is not appropriate for the “safe” areas of the
Flickr site, we ask that you moderate all the public,
private, and friends/family content in your photostream
within the Flickr Community Guidelines.

So, tired of the above game of incompetence, atchang_2001 decided to escalate things and posted his problem and exchange to the Flickr Help forum (where I’m still permanently banned). Finally atchang_2001 got a thinking person’s response to his inquiry. Zack Shepherd (who is probably the best in the customer care department based on my observations, and seems to care more than most of them) fielded the issue saying that the video deletion was probably an error.

From Zack:

“If the video that was removed was the same as the one you linked to than it was taken down in error. Unfortunately you also didn’t get the right response when you initially wrote in and we usually do release the photo/video name. I can assure you there are no bots but as humans we do make mistakes sometimes. I’m sorry that this happened twice on the same case making it even more frustrating.

You are welcome to upload this video again. We are going to circle up with the team to make sure everyone is on the same page.

We’ll also follow up with you directly with more info. “

Flickr by Yahoo! has recently had a horrible rash of censorship problems. From nuking user’s accounts who write critical comments on President Obama’s photostream, to deleting a Professional photographer’s images of clothed male models, to deleting controversial anti-Obama imagery, to kicking me out of the help forum and placing secret flags on some of my inoffensive images to hide them on flickr by Yahoo, to locking down forums where folks post critical comments about their censorship, to censoring photostreams of people because they contain photos of feet — but this one probably takes the cake.

Unfortunately for atchang_2001, the harmless basketball video that he says he uploaded to Flickr that you see above (along with any comments, faves, tags, or other meta data around it) is long gone. See Flickr has no way to restore content that is deleted by their staff even when it’s by mistake. You’d think that this would be a feature that they’d be working on, especially given that former Flickr Chief and co-founder Stewart Butterfield admitted that it was a “mistake” for Flickr not to have this sort of functionality over two years ago. But unfortunately not only do they not have that sort of functionality they are not even working on it — apparently they’ve been too busy working on their new logo for the site to deal with messy little things like protecting user data.

Frankly, the email exchange above is pretty unacceptable. I’m not sure if the problem is Flickr by Yahoo management or simply Flickr by Yahoo’s Censorship Division management, but if Yahoo! is really serious about implementing their marketing hype that the new Yahoo! is “You,” then they should probably consider getting this part of their network cleaned up a little bit. One idea might just be to stop censoring users in the first place. Then you don’t have to worry about mistakes like this happening at all.

Deleting user content should be something that is only done as a measure of last resort, not because some underling in the censorship division didn’t get enough sleep last night or hates anti-Obama imagery or basketball.

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An Open Letter to Elisa Steele EVP & Chief Marketing Officer, Yahoo Inc.

An Open Letter to Elisa Steele

Dear Elisa,

Thank you today for sharing your vision for the new Yahoo! over at the Yahoo! blog today. Your new tagline “under new management…yours,” is refreshing indeed. Sometimes it takes new management to shake things up. I applaud your spirit in suggesting that “I” Thomas Hawk ought to have a say in how Yahoo’s management is run going forward.

In your letter to all of us you write:

“The core of our message will focus on YOU. It will celebrate all of your individual wants, needs, interests, and passions. That’s because Yahoo! really is all about you — we’re constantly evolving to give you more of what you want and less of what you don’t. We want you to make the Web your own and are designing products to put you in the driver’s seat of your Internet experience. Our new brand positioning reflects that.”

I thought that that I’d take a few minutes out of my busy morning browsing photos on Flickr (I browse hundreds a day) to share with you just exactly how you might “celebrate” my individual wants, needs, interests, and passions. Mostly I use Flickr on Yahoo — and boy do I use it. So most of my remarks will be about that.

I thought I’d do this specifically in the form of a wish list. I hope that you are actually sincere in your stated pledge to put Yahoo under “my” management and would take a second out of your equally busy morning to respond to some of these requests — the same courtesy I’m sure you’d extend to any of your other Yahoo managers. By the way, many of these wants, needs, interests and passions, are not just mine, but are shared by many of your other customers.

1. I’d like you to remove the ban on my account from the Flickr Help forum. Censorship sucks Elisa, c’mon, we both know that. Being booted from the Flickr Help Forum indefinitely for pointing Help Forum users to a relevant new blog about Flickr’s censorship practices ought not to get you banned. Don’t shoot the messenger Elisa. I’m sure you can appreciate the irony involved in censoring someone for talking about censorship. It’s personal and it’s petty. And it’s not very nice. Banning someone from the Flickr help forum really ought to be a an action of last resort.

You should consider reviewing the banned list from this Forum and reinstating my account as well as many of the others who are banned there like my good friend Pierre Honeyman. Saying Flickr is all web 2.0ish and is about transparency isn’t really true when you ban people from the help forum. How can we all sing kumbaya together in the campus quad when the security goons won’t let some of us in? Tear down those walls Elisa, tear down those walls.

Oh, one other thing. Let’s lock less critical threads in the Help Forum as well. When we do that it only makes us look foolish when others outside of our little community point out that we’re censoring threads about censorship by locking them.

2. What the hell is up with NIPSA (it means Not In Public Site Areas, in case you’re not familiar with the dreaded acronym)? Why you gotta go be like that? Flickr has a whole public content moderation system, so why the need to secretly apply hidden flags on individual images at Flickr? If you are going to censor people’s images, be upfront about it and let them know.

Don’t label an image “Safe Photo” as moderated by Flickr staff and then secretly remove it from search and other public site areas behind their back just because the image might include critical comments about Flickr. The fact that your recent “galleries” feature won’t allow users to create “galleries” that contain NIPSA photos (another dumb restriction), by the way, is only highlighting how many people (me, included) are currently being secretly censored.

3. It scares me to know that Flickr has no way to recover my content if it is maliciously destroyed by a hacker, myself accidentally, or most scary of all, some of your overzealous censor-happy underlings in the Flickr Censorship Bureau. You may or may not be aware that recently Flickr users have lost *thousands* yes *thousands* of images permanently due to these sorts of actions.

People are putting years of their lives into their photostreams at Flickr. This is more than just about their photos by the way. It’s about living part of your life inside of Flickr. And to think that all of that can just be destroyed permanently and with no recourse with the touch of a button, well, that just’s insane Elisa. Seriously, Stewart Butterfield (back before he left to go mine tin) mentioned that it was a “mistake” for Flickr not to be able to recover deleted content over *two years ago*. The fact that Flickr still has no way to recover deleted content and, as admitted by your staff, ins’t even working on it, well, that’s wrong.

4. I think it’s about time for a rewrite of the Flickr TOS/Community Guidelines. Have you read these lately Elisa? Did you know that you can be deleted from Flickr for being “That Guy.” That’s right. For being “That Guy.” Who is “That Guy?” Is it me? I hope not. Is it Jerry Yang? I doubt it. Is it Carl Icahn? Wait, don’t answer that.

Why the need to force a horribly subjective contract on your users who are investing thousands of hours on your site. Allowing Flickr to delete accounts because someone is “that guy,” basically is the same as saying, “we can delete your account for whatever the hell we want.” Heck, we can delete your account because you didn’t wear purple during our last big Yahoo-love-fest marketing push that everybody needs to wear purple. A lot of the other terms are stupid too. You say don’t upload content that isn’t yours, but then your very own Flickr staff violate that rule. Let’s be specific with the TOS and Community Guidelines. It will make people feel better when the exact rules are spelled out more exactly.

Ok, that’s it for now. I’m looking forward to the next managers meeting. Plus I’m looking forward to the invigorating breakout sessions at the next company offsite. Have you thought about having the next one in Las Vegas Elisa? There is so much cool neon there worth photographing. Remember that time that you all set up that ice cream stand at CES Vegas way back when. Too cool for school!

Oh wait, no, I lied, one last thing. I’m going to post a link to this post in the comment section of the Yahoo blog, but I’m worried. In the comments section on your blog it reads “Notes: Please note that Yahoo! may, in our sole discretion, reject comments for any reason we deem appropriate. Links of value to readers are welcome, but please use them sparingly – wield spam and you’re banished forever. This is a moderated site and comments will appear if and when they are approved. We will review the queue several times daily, so please don’t resubmit if your comment doesn’t appear immediately.” What’s up with that policy? Don’t fear comments Elisa. Let everyone say whatever they want. It makes life more interesting.

Give my best to Carol and the rest of the gang Elisa and know that even when I’m not at HQ it’s still always Sunnyvale in my heart.

Yours Truly,

Thomas Hawk

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FOIA Request for Emails Related to the Official Whitehouse Flickr Photostream

I submitted the following Freedom of Information Act request to the White House today via US Mail. I modeled it after another Whitehouse FOIA request that I found online here. I’ve sent two flickrmails now requesting information regarding the Offical Whitehouse photostream on Flickr to the Whitehouse account on Flickr and have received no response. Hopefully the Whitehouse, in the spirit of Obama’s oft-campaigned promise of transparency, will choose to provide the information requested based on this formal written request. I’m writing to try and discover any correspondence that may have taken place around Flickr’s decision to delete user Shepherd Johnson’s Flickr account after he posted comments critical of President Obama on the official Whitehouse photostream.

FOIA Officer Office of Administration
725 17th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20503

FOIA REQUEST

Fee benefit requested
Fee waiver requested
Expedited processing requested

Dear FOIA Officer:

Pursuant to the federal Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, I request access to and copies of:

All email correspondence to and from representatives of the White House and Yahoo, Inc. regarding the establishment, service and maintenance of the Official Whitehouse photostream on Flickr, Yahoo Inc.’s photo sharing service. I would also like to receive the name and contact information of the primary individual responsible for the maintenance of this Flickr account.

The scope of this request is for documents created between January 20 and September 15, 2009.

I would like to receive the information in electronic format.

As a representative of the news media I am only required to pay for the direct cost of duplication after the first 100 pages.

Through this request, I am gathering information on a case of censorship involving the Flickr account deletion of Flickr user Shepherd Johnson who found his Flickr account deleted after posting comments critical of the President on the Official Whitehouse Flickrstream.

I am seeking this information as an independent blogger for dissemination to the general public.

Release of the information is in the public interest because it will contribute significantly to public understanding of the President’s use of social media as a communications strategy as well as how the White House handles critical commentary through social media channels.

I hope that as the President’s office, in the spirit of Obama’s oft-campaigned promise of transparency, will see fit to honor this information request.

If my request is denied in whole or part, I ask that you justify all deletions by reference to specific exemptions of the act. I will also expect you to release all segregable portions of otherwise exempt material. I, of course, reserve the right to appeal your decision to withhold any information or to deny a waiver of fees.

As I am making this request as a journalist and this information is of timely value, I would appreciate your communicating with me by telephone, rather than by mail, if you have questions regarding this request.

Please provide expedited processing of this request which concerns a matter of urgency.

I look forward to your reply within 20 business days, as the statute requires.

Thank you for your assistance.

Sincerely,

Thomas Hawk

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Flickr User Shepherd Johnson Says Yahoo Security Officer and Former FBI Agent John Zent Threatens to Call Police on Him After Flickr Nuked His Account

Well the bizarre behavior by Flickr/Yahoo over recent customer service and account deletion issues may have just taken a big left turn from wackyland straight into the Twilight Zone. Earlier this week I reported an update on the case of Shepherd Johnson. You’ll remember Johnson as the Flickr user who had his account deleted without warning after posting remarks critical of President Obama on the official Presidential Flickr stream. It’s still not known if pressure from the White House played a role in having Johnson’s account deleted or not, but his account deletion gained widespread attention from both the blogosphere and the mainstream media after Yahoo nuked his entire account and photostream.

According to Johnson, after his account deletion he disconnected from Flickr for almost 3 months, reserved, he said, that nothing would come of his story. After giving more reflection recently to his situation, however, Johnson said that he became disgusted over how Yahoo! Flickr and the Whitehouse had treated him so he decided to try and readdress his account deletion issue with Flickr/Yahoo.

Johnson said that he started out trying to address his account deletion privately with Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ via Flickr mail. Johnson had spoken with Champ earlier last summer and said previously that she’d offered him a free $24.99 gift card so that he could get a new Flickr Pro account after the deletion. According to Johnson, however, this time around Champ promptly blocked his flickr mail messages. He then tried phoning Yahoo’s VP of Global Customer Care, Laura Narducci, using the phone number that she had given him when dealing with his high profile account deletion back in June. Johnson said he left voicemails but that Narducci did not return his calls.

Frustrated at being unable to contact Flickr/Yahoo directly over his account deletion, Shepherd next turned to Flickr’s Help Forum. As I reported on Tuesday, after Johnson posted requesting someone from Flickr/Yahoo contact him, Flickr locked his thread, ironically, telling him that he needed to contact them privately. Johnson started another thread complaining that he had tried to contact them privately with no success and ended up not only having that thread shut down, but being banned from the Flickr Help Forum indefinitely as well. (Note: I’m also indefinitely banned from the Flickr Help Forum. They banned me after referencing an anti-flickr blog in the forum last month). Interestingly, Yahoo employee Zack Sheppard told Johnson that “you are welcome to continue to communicate with us directly,” while locking his thread and booting him from the help forum.

Not willing to simply give up on what he felt was an unjust account deletion with no response from Flickr/Yahoo, Johnson tried again yesterday to contact Yahoo/Flickr over his issue leaving one more voicemail message for Narducci and one more for Champ. Johnson said that his voicemail messages were “not angry, not hostile voicemails, just me stating matter of factly that I wanted this issue resolved.”

And this is where things get weird….

After being totally ignored in his attempts to resolve his account deletion issue with Flickr/Yahoo staff. Johnson says that yesterday he finally did receive a call from someone at Yahoo. Only it wasn’t someone from Flickr’s customer care division at all. it was from someone named John Zent, apparently from Yahoo’s Legal Department’s Risk Management Group. Zent identified himself as a security professional for Yahoo as well as a former FBI Special Agent, Johnson told me. He told me that Zent threatened to have him removed from Flickr for TOS violations as well as have his IP address banned from the site. Zent went on to accuse Johnson of harassment and said that if he did not stop calling Yahoo that he would call the Sunnyvale Police on Johnson. “I was astonished that he had threatened to call the police on a customer who merely had an account dispute which he wanted to have resolved,” said Johnson.
.
While Johnson denies harassing anyone at Yahoo, he did admit to a couple of comments in a post inquiring about what had happened to Champ’s face in a post containing a photograph of her that he felt was unflattering. He said that Zent was “extremely upset” by his comments in this post and brought it up three times with him telling Johnson that his activity on Flickr was being “closely monitored.”

A little digging on Zent would seem to indicate that he indeed actually may be a former FBI agent — although I’m not sure how appropriate it is to be using that status formally against a customer with an account deletion complaint at Yahoo. In fact, it would appear that Zent has quite a colorful past of his own having been charged by a number of sources as being the individual responsible for having Al-Qaeda (I told you this was going to get weird) operative Ali Mohamed released from the Canadian police in 1993 as an FBI Informant. Mohamed was also alleged to have been a “a key planner of the 9/11 plot, and trainer in hijacking,” Apparently another bizarre case related to Zent is that of his daughter’s former boyfriend who was convicted of a triple murder over the killing of his parents for life insurance money. Zent had reportedly testified on the boyfriend’s behalf during the trial.

Johnson says that he is not giving up on his account deletion, which he sees as a free speech issue, just yet. He said he plans to try and contact Narducci again, but that next time he said he’ll leave instructions on where the Sunnyvale police can pick him up. “Yes, my 1st Amendment rights, the issue that this whole thing started over back when I posted comments in the Official Whitehouse Photostream, those rights are that important to me and in an act of civil disobedience I am willing to go to jail for them,” said Johnson.

Interestingly enough, Flickr has repeatedly claimed in the past that they have no way of reactivating customer accounts after deletions. Most recently Flickr staff confirmed this and said that they also were not working on any such feature at present. According to Johnson Zent refuted this claim. “I asked him if Yahoo! could actually turn my account back on to which he replied, “Absolutely!” and then asked and answered his own question, “Will Yahoo! do that? No we will not.” This statement confirms that Heather Champ is a liar when she told me they could not reactivate my Flickr account,” said Johnson.

I contacted both Zent as well as Yahoo PR yesterday to try and get a response on Johnson’s case, but as of yet neither have returned my emails. If/when I hear from them I will post their response.

Update more on this deletion, including additional comments from Shepherd Johnson here. On Reddit here and here.

Update #2: On digg here.

Update #3: Jason Khoury from Yahoo PR just emailed me back the following response from Yahoo on this matter: “It is Yahoo! policy that we don’t discuss members’ accounts and their activity.”

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Remember Shepherd Johnson, That Guy Who Had His Flickr Account Nuked After Posting Comments Critical of President Obama?

Yeah, you remember him. “That” guy.

Turns out he’s still unsatisfied with the way that Flickr handled his account so he politely posted his objection to the Flickr Help Forum. From Johnson:

“I have gotten zero cooperation from flickr or Yahoo! concerning my account. The account name was shepherdjohnson and it was deleted at the beginning of June 2009 with over 1300 photos. The issue has not been resolved to my satisfaction. More here:

BusinessWeek

Please have somebody from flickr/Yahoo! contact me concerning this issue. ”

So how does Flickr respond? They say that they can’t discuss his case except with the owner privately (even though it’s the owner apparently who is asking). All the guy is asking for is for someone to contact him because apparently he’s tried getting them to contact him privately and they won’t.

Unsatisfied at having his first thread locked, user Johnson opens a second thread objecting again and complaining that he’s already tried to contact Flickr privately but that they won’t respond to his private correspondence:

“Yeah, Zack, I tried getting in touch with flickr staff via the method you suggested. And nobody will talk to me. Heather never called me back. Like I’ve said before, this issue is not going to go away until we can come to an understanding. Why don’t you contact me or have another flickr staff member contact me, this is getting ridiculous.

-Shepherd “

So what does Flickr do next? They lock his 2nd thread complaining that nobody at Flickr will communicate with him and then indefinitely boot him from the help forum. Using typical condescending Flickr parent/child language, they call banning him from the Help Forum a “time out.”

What a crappy way to treat your customers. Especially a customer that lost a bunch of their photographs.

Of course I’m still indefinitely banned from the Flickr Help Forum as well. My crime? Simply posting a link to a blog (not mine) where some folks were complaining about what they felt was an anti-gay bias at Flickr over account deletions.

Censorship sucks.

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Flickr Will No Longer Nuke Your Metadata When They Comply With DMCA Takedown Notices

JD: It seems that Yahoo has an extreme policy regarding DMCA takedown notices; even beyond what the law stipulates.

TH: I don’t know how many photos of Crook Yahoo wiped out but there was no need to wipe out the metadata, comments, descriptions, posts, etc. And there was no need to permanently delete this stuff. Yahoo went way beyond what the DMCA requires and I don’t like that anyone can just send in a bogus DMCA notice on my Flickrstream and have hundreds and thousands of lines of text deleted that might be associated with an image.

Yahoo needs to change their policy on this.

February 13, 2007, 10 Zen Monkeys Interview, “Is Yahoo/Flickr DMCA Policy Censorship?”

Back in 2007, Yahoo/Flickr nuked an image of mine citing a bogus DMCA request from Michael Crook (who later was sued by the EFF and apologized to all in internetland as part of his settlement). Stewart Butterfield, who was Flickr Chief at the time, later said that while he didn’t feel it was a mistake for flickr to have nuked my photo and all of the metadata surrounding it over a bogus DMCA notice, that it was a mistake for Flickr not to have a mechanism to restore that kind of deletion.

More significantly to me than the fact that Flickr nuked my image, was the fact that they nuked all of the comments, metadata, etc. around my image. From my own post on the matter in 2007. “Irrespective of any DMCA claim about the image. Yahoo could have simply taken down the image, but left all of the metadata associated with the image,” I wrote.

I’ve been hammering on Flickr for a few years now to change their policy of deleting photo metadata along with photo deletions. Most recently, about four weeks ago, (before I was indefinitely banned from the Flickr Help Forum) I again suggested that there was a better way for flickr to handle DMCA takedown notices.

The good news is that Flickr finally seems to be relenting on this one.

In an article entitled, “After ‘Obama Joker’ debacle, Flickr changes takedown policy,” Mark Millan over at the L.A. Times writes: “One of the site’s 38 million users suggested in the support forums that instead of completely removing the page in question as it had been doing, Flickr should delete just the image, leaving the comments and other relevant information, such as when the offending image was uploaded and how many hits it had gotten.

That’s just what Flickr says it is now doing. As of Tuesday at 3:30 p.m., takedown requests filed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, will result in the image being replaced with one that reads, “This image has been removed due to a claim of copyright infringement.”

This is a step forward in the right direction for Flickr and I’m really pleased to see this change (even if it has taken two years). It’s unfortunate that more recently it has taken a barrage of negative PR at the brand in order to see this small improvement made.

…But…

Flickr still needs to go further. A lot of controversy around the most recent Joker/Obama image was over how seriously Flickr examines their takedown notices. Can any crackpot simply file a DMCA takedown notice and get an image killed? As it turns out, probably.

As part of an experiment, one Flickr user turned in a bogus DMCA takedown notice coming from “Joe Blow” (literally).

“Actually, I’ve verified that they don’t, by submitting a fake claim of my own, from a once-off email address, using the name “Joe Blow” and giving no identifying information other than an obviously fake address (“Anytown, USA”),” wrote flickr user 3e, confirming that the subsequent image on Flickr was nuked.

A lot of people say that Flickr is required by law to remove items when they get a DMCA takedown request. This is simply not true though. If “Joe Blow” sent Flickr a DMCA takedown request telling them that President Obama’s photostream was violating copyright law, I guarantee you they would not nuke the President’s photostream. It’s too high profile of an account. They would choose instead not to nuke his stream and defend it against an obvious bogus DMCA request. And this would be the right decision for them to make.

Although Flickr certainly can’t be held responsible to rigorously investigate every single complaint, they certainly can look at some of these on a case by case basis and make logical and intelligent determinations.

In my own case, when my image of Crook was nuked, I immediately contacted Heather Champ directly at Flickr pointing her to a boing boing post detailing Crook’s abuse of the DMCA by issuing these bogus complaints. Certainly it would not take much investigating to determine that Michael Crook did not hold copyright to the image that he claimed. But none of that mattered. It should have.

Flickr also should also agree to follow Google’s more transparent practice of submitting DMCA requests going forward to the Chilling Effects website.

More coverage on this from Stephen Shankland CNET here.

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Hey Flickr … Why So Censorious? MSNBC Report on Flickr

MSNBC is out with an article on a lot of the recent censorship that’s been going on at Flickr. I’m not talking specifically about the Obama/Joker image here (which I now believe Flickr did receive a valid, albeit potentially bogus DMCA takedown notice on) but more about the general tone (baby talk, etc.) of how Flickr handles customer service issues, account deletions, and customer criticism in their help forum (where I’ve personally been banned indefinitely). In the past month alone Flickr has locked many threads in the forum where recent users have complained about account deletions and other issues.

I spoke with the MSNBC reporter on the article, Helen Popkin, yesterday in an interview about Flickr’s customer service practices and shared with her my own frustrating experiences of being both censored repeatedly and banned by Flickr most recently in the help forum.

The thing is, nobody is a bigger fan of Flickr than I am. I’ve invested thousands of hours over the course of the last four years into the site. I’ve personally uploaded over 29,000 images on Flickr. I’ve faved over 75,000 photos there. I have over 14,000 contacts. I’ve made dozens of real life friends through the site. I spend time on the site every single day. I’ve sold photos through the site and currently participate in Getty Images stock photography offerings through the site. I’ve blogged incessantly about the site from the very beginning. A google search for my name with Flickr brings up 248,000 results. While at times I have been critical of some of the decisions that Flickr has made, mostly having to do with censorship cases, account deletions and the permanent loss of indivdual’s photos, etc. I’ve always felt that I’ve done so respectfully. I quite honestly love the place and a big part of my photographic goal is to upload a million photos to the site before I die.

That said, unfortunately, I do think that Popkin’s article is pretty much right on the money. Flickr currently holds a monopoly in the photosharing space and as such has gotten away with abusing their customers in my opinion. I don’t deserve to be banned indefinitely from the help forum simply for posting a link to an anti-Flickr blog (not mine) that is criticizing Flickr over what they feel is an anti-gay bias. Don’t shoot the messenger. Rather than censor me, Flickr should take time to address the concerns of the anti-flickr blog and openly and honestly discuss them with their users so that an anti-flickr blog is never started in the first place.

The article points out that as a private company Flickr can do anything that they want. They can limit speech. They can delete user accounts. They can censor whomever they want. And I totally get that. I’ve never maintained that Flickr is not a private business owned by a private but publicly traded company. But just because they can do these things doesn’t mean that they *should* do these things. And as a company it doesn’t mean that it’s in their best interest to do these things.

I hope Flickr, and my participation in the Flickr Community, last for the rest of my life. Hell, I hope that before I die I can figure out a way to maintain my Flickr account for hundreds of years beyond my death (personally I think it would be interesting to see Flickr offer an infinite sort of Pro account that would maintain your images even after you die). But I also believe that the best communities are communities that are open, transparent and free of censorship. Free speech is not something that should threaten any community. And I suppose this puts me at odds with the current Flickr administration who rather see themselves as shapers of communities and moderators of the content on their site.

For the first time yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to see Flickr staff crack just a little in admitting that taking down an image only (and not all of the corresponding comments, faves, and other meta data around a photo) when they get a DMCA takedown notice might not be a bad idea. I still think Flickr needs to do more though. Account and image deletions should not be permanent and irrevocable. Both could be pulled down by making the images private and thus invisible to anyone on Flickr but the owner while Flickr gave users an opportunity to take corrective action over problems flickr has with accounts or to appeal censorship decisions. Help forum threads should not be locked when users are critical of the service. The Help Forum is the number one way that Flickr staff communicates with their users and when they lock critical threads it only frustrates users even more. Nor should users be banned from the help forum for issuing comments critical of Flickr practices.

I hope that Yahoo takes a hard look at Popkin’s article. There is much improvement that could be done with Flickr. Flickr is a tremendously important cultural jewel that in a strange way I feel belongs to society at large at this point as much as it belongs to Yahoo. So much art is being made and shared at Flickr. So many people are using it in a way to culturally enrich the world. Yahoo should look at this cultural jewel that they have and recognize it for what it is, also recognizing that censorship has often been the enemy of culture.

I’d much rather blog about all the great things going on at Flickr than the things that I feel are negative going on there. And I do hope that some of the practices over the course of the past few years mentioned in this article are addressed and changed.

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Does Flickr Censor User Content Over Blatantly Fake DMCA Notices?

Does Flickr Censor User Content Over Blatantly Fake DMCA Notices?

Update: When adding an extra letter to last name that Alkhateeb had provided me, I was able to pull up what appears to be another artist who would appear to be claiming the Joker/Obama image as his own creation. The details are still fuzzy and am just basing this update on some Google searches that I’ve found with the new name. I have contacted this artist and am trying to determine if he in fact is the person who filed a DMCA takedown notice with Flickr over this image and if he is claiming the Obama/Joker creation as his own in contrast to previous reports from Alkhateeb and the Los Angeles Times that Alkhateeb is the image’s creator. I’ve also contacted Alkhateeb to discuss the claims of this individual. I will report back when I learn more.

For the past week or so I’ve been reporting on the Flickr Censorship case involving Firas Alkhateeb and his popular Joker/Obama Time Magazine cover. You’ll recall that Alkhateeb had posted his image to his Flickr account, garnered over 20,000 views, along with many comments on the image, saw the image subsequently used with the word “socialism” printed underneath it in Los Angeles and various other cities as street art… and then Flickr nuked his image and all the comments that went along with it.

Many bloggers and news outlets accused Flickr of censorship and political bias in the removal of what was seen by many as a clear fair use parody image critical of the President. The case made the national press and with an EFF attorney adding that Alkhateeb indeed had a very strong fair use defense. After a substantial amount of critical press over the image, Flickr Community Manager Heather Champ finally came out defending Flickr over the issue saying that Alkhateeb’s image had been removed from Flickr due to a “a complete Notice of Infringement as outlined by the DMCA (Digitial Millenium Copyright Act)” In the same breath Champ accused the press and blogosphere of being “makey uppey.” Shortly afterwards, the thread where Flickr users were complaining about this image deletion was shut down by Flickr staff.

Later that day in reporting on the issue The Los Angeles Times asked Champ who had issued the DMCA takedown request and Champ replied that Flickr was not able to give that information out. “I don’t know how this crazy game of telephone got started,” Champ wrote. “I’m not sure how complying with the law has led to the idea that we (the Flickr team) have a particular political agenda.”

Yesterday I reported on PDN’s efforts to get to the bottom of this takedown request. PDN contacted the logical parties who might have objected to this image. Time Magazine (whose logo was incorporated in the image), DC Comics (who would own the rights to the famous Joker image used on the Obama photo) and Platon (the photographer who had taken the original image used by Time). All three parties denied having filed a DMCA takedown notice with Flickr, which lead people to wonder all the more just who the hell *did* file the takedown notice.

While Alkhateeb originally stated that flickr had not told him who filed the request, after looking more closely at the email sent by Flickr he realized that they did in fact list the name of the person who had filed it. At first the way that it was presented was confusing to Alkhateeb and he thought the name that they gave him was a Yahoo representative’s name and not the person filing the report.

So who filed the report?

Well because Alkhateeb is currently working with lawyers on the case he asked me not to publish the name flickr provided him, but Alkhateeb has shared the name with me and after having seen the name, what I can say is that it wasn’t Time, DC Comics or Platon, or any other party with any possible plausible IP interest in this image. In fact, the name that was given is very likely a totally bogus made up name entirely. A google search for the odd name turns up zero results and even a google search for the last name alone turns up zero results for that surname. It’s like someone just typed random characters on a keyboard to make up the name used in the DMCA takedown notice.

The fact that the name filing the DMCA takedown notice would appear to be totally fake leaves one to wonder. Does Flickr just blindly pull down any content when any DMCA request is presented? If so that’s not very reassuring. If, for instance, “Donald Duck” or “Bob Xjibtstruytubopluy” claimed copyright over images in President Obama’s stream, would they simply remove these images as well? Somehow I doubt they would. Or was Flickr staff aware that the takedown request was bogus and instead decided to use it as cover to remove an image that offended their own clear personal and political sensibilities? A few months earlier Flickr nuked an entire account of a user who wrote critical remarks on President Obama’s photostream.

Whatever the case, I do think it is disingenuous at best for flickr to try and hide behind a clearly bogus DMCA notice when dealing with criticism over their decision to remove this image. Many people last week were led to believe by statements by Champ in Flickr’s Help Forum and in the press that Time or DC or the photographer had complained to flickr about the image and Flickr never bothered to clarify about the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the stated notice.

Transparency, fairness and a willingness to communicate openly with your community ought to be the hallmark traits of a site that is dependent upon their users for their content. By hiding the illegitimacy of this complaint, Flickr has shown themselves yet again trying to sweep their actions under the rug dismissing negative criticism with half truths. It is ironic that they would accuse the press and blogosphere of being “makey uppey” while in the same breath hiding behind a clearly bogus DMCA request on their own.

So what should Flickr do at this point?

Well, given that the DMCA takedown notice was bogus (and even had it been by an actual interested party Alkhateeb would have had a legitimate fair use to the image) they should apologize to Alkhateeb and restore his image and all of the comments that they nuked along with it.

Of course it is worth pointing out that even though former Flickr Founder and Flickr Chief Stewart Butterfield called it a “mistake” for Flickr not to have a mechanism to restore staff deleted content over two years ago that still today Flickr has not built (and is not working on) the ability to restore staff deleted content. So even if Flickr wanted to at this point they couldn’t put Alkhateeb’s image back. While Alkhateeb may be allowed to reupload the image in the future, his original image (along with all of the comments to the image and all of the links to his now dead deleted image) is pretty likely gone for good.

And that’s too bad.

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So if TIME Magazine, DC Comics and Platon Didn’t Send Flickr a DMCA Takedown Notice Over the Obama Joker Image, Who Did?

So if TIME Magazine, DC Comics and Platon Didn't Send Flickr a DMCA Takedown Notice Over the Obama Joker Image, Who Did

An interesting report from PDNPulse yesterday regarding the latest in the Flickrgate case of why Flickr decided to censor student Firas Alkhateeb’s image of the Obama Joker. You’ll remember that the image caused all the uproar (here’s a list of most places where the story ran) last week after Flickr was reported to have removed the controversial image from Alkhateeb’s stream and their site.

Flickr’s defense of their removal of the image eventually came from Community Manager Heather Champ (in a Help Forum thread that has subsequently been shut down) who told Flickr users that the reason why the image was removed was that someone filed a DMCA request to take it down.

“In this intance, the Yahoo! Copyright Team here in the US received a complete Notice of Infringement as outlined by the DMCA (Digitial Millenium Copyright Act),” stated Champ trying to deflect blame for the deletion on the controversial law. Champ added, “There appears to be a whole lot of makey uppey going in the news and blogosphere about this event.”

But now PDN is saying that they have contacted spokespeople at TIME Magazine, DC Comics, and the photographer who took the original image for Time Magazine, Platon, and all are denying having filed a DMCA takedown notice against this image. Apparently the photographer Platon’s office wasn’t even aware of the Obama/Joker issue.

So if TIME Magazine, DC Comics and Platon didn’t file a DMCA takedown notice against the image, who did? And if someone with no possible IP interest in the image filed it, wouldn’t it be a tad disingenuous at this point for Flickr staff to be hiding behind this takedown notice in justifying their act of censorship? No wonder why when they were asked by the Los Angeles Times *who* filed the DMCA takedown notice, they were told that Flickr wasn’t able to give this information out. Aren’t able to give this information out or won’t give this information out?

I was in contact yesterday with with Alkhateeb. I asked Alkhateeb if he’d learned yet from Flickr who filed the takedown notice and he told me that he hadn’t. “I actually don’t know who filed the DMCA notice,” wrote Alkhateeb to me in an email, “but I figured it must be from Time magazine, since it’s their image. All flickr told me was that one was filed, but not by who.” Alkhateeb said that he is working with the EFF in order to defend the image, adding “I’m in the process of consulting with lawyers now and figuring out my options but so far one guy I talked to at the EFF told me in all likelihood the image is fair use and I shouldn’t have any problems with a long, protracted court case, but well have to see in the coming stages.”

Could it possibly be that this image was censored because a party with no plausible IP interest submitted a DMCA takedown notice and Flickr staff just blindly removed the image — possibly just sheer incompetence? Or could it be that Flickr staff knew that the DMCA takedown request was bogus but wanted to use it anyways to take down a work of art that offended their personal and political sensibilities? The thing is that we just don’t know at this point because for all of Flickr’s claims to be an open and transparent service with their users, they are unwilling to address the issue of whether or not the DMCA request was issued by a party with a valid IP interest. I will say though that if Flickr staff knows that the DMCA takedown request is bogus and is now using it to deflect criticism against them over their censorship act that this would actually not be an open and honest way to communicate with their users at all, that this would in fact be a disingenuous and dishonest way to communicate with them.

I do think that it’s odd that Flickr/Yahoo won’t tell anyone, even Alkhateeb himself, who filed the complaint against him. Clearly Yahoo has informed people of who have filed complaints like this in the past. This shouldn’t be top secret and I’m not aware of any legal reason why a company can’t inform someone about who filed a takedown request against them. Mike Arrington blogged last April about Yahoo pulling down content by Loren Feldman and 1938 Media which clearly identified that takedown request as coming from Scorpio Music. So why is it that now, suddenly, Flickr/Yahoo is so tight lipped about who filed this request? Sounds to me like there just may be a bit more “makey uppey” going on at Flickr and Yahoo than in the news and blogosphere.