Since the damage has been done and you stopped, all that need to be figured out is:

1. sizes of images delivered
2. geographic location of delivery (to see if licensing is permitted at all)
3. exact count of images per photographer
4. pay up with an appropriate rate based on the Corbis standard for news / artistic stock. Based on applicable use.

Yahoo should in turn publish who was harmed individually in the progress to allow for a transparent process.

There are Getty and Corbis licensed images on Flickr. If you managed to hit one of those, oh boy. But Getty Images is aware of the issue and probably Corbis as well since it’s one company anyway. So I think we probably see this resolved soon either way.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy!

That’s become the best descriptor of how coding is done today. The word that stood out the most in your original post was “assume” (and all its variations). Assuming doesn’t get you out from in front of a judge, my friend! Ever hear that little ditty about ignorance not being a very good legal defense?

I would have thought that if you were serious about doing business you would have an attorney on retainer…and if you were going to be doing anything with something that might possibly violate copyrights that you would have retained a copyright attorney.

Sucks to be you and Flickr right now……

I applaud your prompt ‘cease & desist,’ and apology to those that were “angered” for an “integration feature”, and I do understand your explanation and reasoning.

This would be an entirely different issue if you were resisting or stalling.

You’re NOT! Kudos!

No sale or resulting monetary benefit of any kind is required for copyright violation under US law. All that’s required is that someone redistributes images without the written consent of the copyright holder.

As Scott Bourne states on TWiPPhoto.com, the fact that you didn’t sell any of them directly may affect the size of the damages it does not negate the violation. Scott further states:

“Additionally – I would argue that Myxer DID
profit, if they sold advertisements that
surrounded my content, that’s the same as
selling my image. In fact, I don’t ever
“sell” my images. I license their use. And
I have frequently licensed images for
advertising-driven content. I get paid of
course. Here, I didn’t get paid.”

And I agree with him completely.

To me this smacks of corporate spin, when a truly felt honest ‘oh $#!^ we really screwed that up and we are very sorry…’ etc. would have been easier to understand.

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I would kindly point out that we’re not trying to hide behind the fact that we weren’t selling images for anything. I brought that point up parenthetically because I thought the title of Jim Goldstein’s blog entry was a little misleading.

Rob –

Thank you for your kind words. I agree that it will be a good thing if this incident causes a fresh and reasoned round of discussions with regard to copyright and images.

We’re in an era in which a huge percentage of the population has a digital camera in their possession, either stand-alone or integrated with their mobile phone. I think that when most of these casual/amateur “photographers” upload their photos to websites for sharing, they have a very different set of intents and expectations for their usage then do professional photographers. I think a broader discussion of copyright and photos that considers how to balance the desires of these very different groups of people would be very healthy.

I do think that Creative Commons is a very commendable tool for expressing intent, but it is, like virtually everything about copyright, still too complicated to be practical for the layperson/amateur content creator.

Do I think this was intentional, no. A second time around, yes. My suggestion is that you contact flickr and see if there is a practical way to opt in. If not stick a fork in this idea and call it done.

One side effect has been that the issue of copyrights and photographs on websites is a little higher than it was a week ago!

Regards,

Rob…