Censorship on Flickr?
I’m a very big fan of the photo-sharing website Flickr. They provide a great service and a fantastic medium for both amateur and professional photographers to get their work out to the world. Flickr has grown to be one of the largest internet communities, with thousands of groups and many more thousands of members. In short, it is one of the heights of the Web 2.0 movement. However, a recent story has me a little worried.
According to Thomas Hawk, a blogger and Flickr user, a member of the Flickr community is at the moment close to being expelled from the site. Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira, an Icelandic single mum and artist, recently discovered that her work had been pilfered by another gallery, Only Dreemin. They had apparently sold thousands of dollars worth of her images, and when she confronted them with this, they refused to give her the money that was rightfully hers.
In response, she did what any internet personality of any ilk would do, and posted about it. And while her story resonated loudly with her Flickr fans, Flickr have apparently taken umbrage at her style of publicity. Even though her story had reached the front page of Digg, and hundreds of supportive comments, Flickr apparently decided that they would remove the photograph (including the comments that came with it) and send her this following warning;
“Flickr is not a venue for to you harass, abuse, impersonate, or intimidate others. If we receive a valid complaint about your conduct, we will send you a warning or terminate your account.”
This lays some seriously dangerous precedent, and should be taken with grave respect by those of us who might one day find ourselves in the same position. If we are not able to stand up for our own rights in our online communities, where will we be able to?
Posted by Josh Hill
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