Flickr's Selling Your Photos, and You May Not See Any Revenue

[engine]

Did you upload your photos on a Creative Commons licence? You may find somebosy else it profiting from work you expected to offer for free.

Is it any wonder that some photographers are upset over this!

Flickr, the Yahoo-owned photo sharing site, announced last week that it would sell canvas prints of some photos uploaded to the service. What surprised some photographers was how it would treat some images.

It turns out the Web giant is selling prints of photos some photographers intended to give away for free, according to a report Monday by the Wall Street Journal. That has upset the photographers who said they felt Yahoo was making money at the expense of the community on Flickr. Flickr's Selling Your Photos, and You May Not See Any Revenue [cnet.com]

[graeme_p]

The perennial problem of people not understanding licences: if you do not want people to make commercial use of a work, use a license that does not allow it - there are creative commons licences that do just that (they probably want CC BY NC or similar).

The same thing happens with software: I have come across several things that say that they are "GPL licensed but not for commercial use" - a contradiction. Then there are people who use CC licences on software.

People are just confused by the whole thing.

[explorador]

The perennial problem of people not understanding licences: if you do not want people to make commercial use of a work, use a license that does not allow it

Also consider how many upload high res images to a public site then expecting people not to grab them or profit from that. Not a good idea. I don't really understand why are many using public sites as private storage.

[engine]

I don't really understand why are many using public sites as private storage.

I'm inclined to agree, however, the only guess I can make is that people just wanted to share it for free, and not for someone to come along and make money off it by selling prints.

This kind of action by flickr may backfire in the long term as people start to catch on.

[jrs79]

if you are not paying for the service or product you are the product. Once you understand that you will be fine.

[explorador]

the only guess I can make is that people just wanted to share it for free, and not for someone to come along and make money off it by selling prints.

True. I guess the risks are not so obvious to many. I've worked on photography for years, those things can get ugly, it's not wise to expose high res files.

if you are not paying for the service or product you are the product. Once you understand that you will be fine.

Quite clear

[Planet13]

if you are not paying for the service or product you are the product. Once you understand that you will be fine.

Please explain.

[engine]

if you are not paying for the service or product you are the product.

I find that an overused phrase. Whilst some might believe it as correct, I don't believe it's accurate. It's just one way a modern Internet business is perceived.

Think about the example of YouTube. It's free for users to upload their videos. Does that make the video publishers the product? No. How is YouTube funded? Well, that's a little cloudier due to google's accounting procedures, but the site is covered in ads. Who pays for the ads? The advertisers, of course. Who is the target of the ads? It's the web surfer, not the contributor or publisher.

Think back many years, before the Internet as we know it, and if you're old enough you may remember getting free magazines and newspapers. There are still many free offline. These free magazines and newspapers were funded by advertising. Who was the target of that? It was the reader, not the contributor. Sure, some contributors were paid, and even some revenue sharing options might have been agreed, just as it is with some of today's Internet. Think of YouTube revenue sharing, and think of Google AdSense, amongst others.

Any business can create a business model and write its own terms and conditions of business. The problem occurs when it's not absolutely clear what those terms and conditions are, with legal-speak confusing the issue. In addition, and in this circumstance, I suspect that there is a misunderstanding by contributors about flickr's terms, and of the interpretation of Creative commons Licensing.

For more information about Creative Commons Licensing [creativecommons.org...]

And here's flickr's Creative Commons Licensing [flickr.com...]

If you share information you have to understand how each business is going to operate and what it plans to do with "your" content, or don't be surprised is it's used in a way you didn't think about.

[graeme_p]

@explorador, yes, that is no doubt what they wanted to do, but, if they understood Creative Commons licensing (and its not hard) they could have chosen a non-commercial license that exists specifically allows people to share stuff for free without anyone being allowed to make money off it.