The latest feature on Flickr gives users (or anyone else) the ability to embed pictures directly into websites. It adds the title and their own Flickr logo to the image, BUT it seems to make it easier for people to steal the images and use them elsewhere, although if they are a business there is a chance that they will get caught out by a copyright violation claim.
Is this a good or a bad thing?
It seems they are going the same direction as Panoramio did when Google got their hands on them, and as someone who used Panoramio and was quite pleased to see my images on Google Earth reach over 4,000,000 views, I soon changed my tune when I was finding them all over the web on travel sites etc.
My option then was to delete my account at Panoramio, so, will the same happen with Flickr?
This blog contains all our 'Cath in Canada' postings back to 2008 in the archive list on the side bar.
2 comments:
Your reaction is much the same as ours. The useless and poorly designed so called travel websites take no notice when asked to remove photos and we resented the way they used our product to make money for themselves without the courtesy to offer to pay a licence to use fee or even acknowledge where the photo came from. We've stopped uploading to Panoramia, but not deleted the account -- too late. We have deleted our Flickr account though.
I contacted, or at least tried to contact panoramio on numerous occasions to delete my account but never recieved a reply, and it was the only way to delete other than deleting every individual picture. Eventually they posted a delete option directly on their website which did work, but they never answered any queries which I had about their methods etc.
I like to have my pictures on Flickr (but that may change).
Unfortunately if anyone 'steals' and image to use on a blog it's a pain to sort out, but if an image is used commercially then it's a much easier matter to gain recompense by making them buy a licence or remove the image and pay up anyway.
There's a writer from my home town using one of my pictures (un-credited)on an article which she has written and even though she bangs on about being honest and professional in her profile, she has refused to acknowledge requests to remove my image.
So much for her moral stance!
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