FLICKR PRIVACY AND THE STOLEN SCREAM

Here is a great video about Noam Galai, a New York photographer who uploaded his photos a couple of years ago on Flickr and some of his photos went viral, but ... not because he wanted them to.

The copy below is an excerpt of the terms & conditions that one agrees to when opening up a Flickr account.

CONTENT SUBMITTED OR MADE AVAILABLE FOR INCLUSION ON THE SERVICE

Yahoo!7 does not claim ownership of Content you submit or make available for inclusion on the Service. However, with respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant Yahoo!7 the following worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive license(s), as applicable:

• With respect to Content you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of Yahoo!7 Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purposes of providing and promoting the specific Yahoo!7 Group to which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo!7 removes such Content from the Service.
• With respect to photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo!7 Groups, the license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform and publicly display such Content on the Service solely for the purpose for which such Content was submitted or made available. This license exists only for as long as you elect to continue to include such Content on the Service and will terminate at the time you remove or Yahoo!7 removes such Content from the Service.
• With respect to Content other than photos, graphics, audio or video you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Service other than Yahoo!7 Groups, the perpetual, irrevocable and fully sub-licensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

• "Publicly accessible" areas of the Service are those areas of the Yahoo!7 network of properties that are intended by Yahoo!7 to be available to the general public. By way of example, publicly accessible areas of the Service would include Yahoo!7 Message Boards and portions of Yahoo!7 Groups, Photos and Briefcase that are open to both members and visitors. However, publicly accessible areas of the Service would not include portions of Yahoo!7 Groups that are limited to members, Yahoo!7 services intended for private communication such as Yahoo!7 Mail or Yahoo!7 Messenger, or areas off of the Yahoo!7 network of properties such as portions of World Wide Web sites that are accessible via hypertext or other links but are not hosted or served by Yahoo!7.

I had to force myself to read this very slowly because this part of the terms & conditions is complicated. In a nutshell, they are saying that by agreeing to the terms, that even though Yahoo doesn't "own" the photos on the site Flickr - they can use them. Perhaps for the front page of the site when you log in or if they back it up on the recovery site, etc. Not a big deal. THEY don't say though that by putting your photos on the site that anyone can "steal" them. That's up to whomever has the indecency to do something like that. You can protect yourself though. Flickr has a lot of privacy settings, for instance. You can also put your copyright notice under each photo or a watermark on the photo itself. You can do these things if you don't want anyone to use your images. Hopefully ... or atleast you have some sort of retribution if they do.

Noam didn't do any of this. His photos were public and boy did the public take advantage. He says he doesn't mind so much that artists used the image, to make a statement, for example, but he was not too happy about when somebody or company was making money off of his image. His face has been recycled so many times I wonder if even half of the people using his image know the real source. Originally someone did though, they saw his Flickr account and there is such a thing as Flickr mail. If they wanted to use any of the images it's called "asking permission". 

He's turned it around a bit though - he has a website, Facebook and Twitter accounts and he's even selling his images on merchandise in his website store. Noam also works for AOL. I can't help but wonder if any of this would have happened had he been working for Yahoo instead. Rock on Noam Galai !!