Flickr - A Cautionary Tale
I just found out today about the lawsuit being brought against Virgin Atlantic after they ran ads using Flickr photographs.
The photographs were posted to the yahoo's popular photo sharing site by a youth pastor under a creative commons license. What I didn't realize is that Flickr offers six different types of creative commons licenses and some of them do allow commercial use. The idea behind Creative Commons is to allow people to share intellectual property, so for example, I can post a photograph you took on my blog without violating copyright laws. However this story is a reminder that we do not live in an innocent world and although "radical trust" is great piece of web2.0 rhetoric we need to be careful with what we share and how we share it, especially when we are sharing content about other people.
The photographs were posted to the yahoo's popular photo sharing site by a youth pastor under a creative commons license. What I didn't realize is that Flickr offers six different types of creative commons licenses and some of them do allow commercial use. The idea behind Creative Commons is to allow people to share intellectual property, so for example, I can post a photograph you took on my blog without violating copyright laws. However this story is a reminder that we do not live in an innocent world and although "radical trust" is great piece of web2.0 rhetoric we need to be careful with what we share and how we share it, especially when we are sharing content about other people.
posted by Matt @ 4:11 PM
2 Comments:
At 7:57 AM,
Anonymous said…
"radical trust" is great piece of web2.0 rhetoric. "
Hmmm... Not sure if I see the connection between somebody violating copyright laws and radical trust in this example.
A wise warning... be careful what you post... but another wise warning is... be careful what you steal. This stuff is very basic. Radical Trust applies when you put stuff up FOR it to be used for some other purpose. Not when you post something with restrictions clearly marked. That is called stealing.
This is a clear example of copyright violation, not radical trust.
collin
At 9:07 AM,
Matt said…
Actually, I fist thought this was simply a copyright violation but as I now understand the facts this is not an illegal use of the photograph because of the type of license used. A license that allowed others to reuse the image even for commercial purposes.
However, even if the photographer waived his rights, the young woman may still have rights over how her likeness is used. I think that is the crux of the current legal case.
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