Opinions welcome from Flickr users

[Old Tyke]

Gentlemen, I would like to ask for your opinions on "use" of photos uploaded to Flickr and social media platforms such as a twitter.

For some background info I have a popular hobby blog which receives approx 5000 hits per month on average. To provide a very vague example of the content, imagine that I have inside sources at Ford about new models that no-one else knows about, that's the kind of thing I blog about. Now also imagine photographers getting pics of these new models in testing (taken from public property) and uploading them to their public Flickr page or twitter feed. I find these pics on Flickr/twitter and use the Flickr embed link which provides me with a handy 500px wide thumbnail to put on my blog and then when clicked, goes through to the Flickr photo URL for the full size photo. The Flickr embed thumbnail shows all the photo details, photographer name etc but as a courtesy I always add my own "Photo Credit : blah" below the photo even though in my opinion it's not actually needed due to it all appearing on the thumbnail already. Additionally, I will post a comment in their Flickr photo comment section saying something like "great photo! I've linked to it on my blog <specific blog post url> with due credit, thanks".

Similarly if I find a pic of something on a public twitter feed I will use the photo URL to create a 500px thumbnail and then do a <a href= > to twitter post URL when clicked, along with the same photo credit courtesy as above.

My take on it is that I am simply linking to their own platform where their content is hosted and providing a "snapshot" or preview on my blog. These Flickr sites and twitter accounts are all small and I'm generating a ton of traffic to them which they would never get otherwise because they don't bother adding any kind of searchable description or use the image tags. Basically I'm giving their work a lot of exposure and "free advertising" that they wouldn't normally get. If the roles were reversed and I were the photographer then I would be extremely pleased to find someone shared the same interest and they wanted to give my pics a wider audience. I would not have any issue with it whatsoever and in fact welcome it.

I have been receiving borderline abusive messages from one Flickr photographer who claims that I am breaking every copyright law in the land by "stealing" his content and using it as my own and he is going to sue me for many millions of pounds and one Twitter account holder who shares a similar belief. While not every visitor clicks through to their page, the majority do as I can see the exit links in my site stats, so the photographers are seeing extra traffic.

I'm struggling to see what the problem is if I'm honest. It's not like I'm passing their work off as my own and nor am I stealing their content. They are posting their photos in the public domain presumably so other people can look at them so why is posting a thumbnail and click through to their content deemed to be such an issue? I really don't understand it so I'm happy to be educated on what I'm missing here.

I welcome your thoughts.

[JulianHJ]

Sounds like you're going about it in the right way. It's no different to what the media do, or websites like Reddit, and PH for that matter. Ask him what he wants, if he says money then ignore him.

[MartinP]

So long as you're linking to content freely available then you're not breaching anyone's copyright. There were a couple of cases in 2014 that went to the EU Court of Justice to clarify this. So looks like you're not doing anything wrong.

[Old Tyke]

The photographer is now frothing at the mouth and claims "The Photographer has the right to demand that you remove them. It's intellectual property and is protected under Creative Commons Licensing. Means you can't edit, Alter, or share without expressed permission and/or providing credit. Just because a image is shared by the photographer online via flickr, twitter, or facebook, does not exclude that image from copyright protection."

However, upon reviewing the CC Licensing which are found here ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/), the most restrictive one - NonCommercial-NoDerivs - it specifically states "This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially."

The actual photo is not being altered in any way (does using a line of html to scale it to 500px to fit on the blog count?), credit is being given and they are not being used for commercial gain so my interpretation of that is no crime is being committed by doing what I'm doing. Yes, the photo is still their intellectual property and copyright to them, but that does not mean a third party cannot use or share them, so long as the usage stipulations are satisfied. I'm no expert on the matter though and I'm happy to be corrected.

[Rogue86]

If they're asking you to remove it, then to be honest I would honour their wish whether you're legally in the right or not. Common courtesy really would be to ask them to use their image in the first place rather than holding their work ransom under the T&Cs of the CC licence.

[Old Tyke]

Rogue86 I have done already, but I'm still going to be sued for many millions of pounds and they are still frothing over it. This is the latest message received :

"Creative Commons is only one type of licensing. Intellectual properties are covered under different rules.

Federal Copyright Act of 1976 protects these digital images and unless you have the permission of the photographer, you cannot copy, print, distribute, publicly display to include share them online."

Which is true, but the photo is already being publicly displayed by them so that one doesn't apply. Also what's the definition of "distribute" and "share" in this instance? By creating a hotlink to the pic that they themselves are hosting would not imho be classed as distributing it. I suppose it could be argued that you are technically sharing it, even though you're only providing a thumb hyperlink to where they have the pic hosted.

Edited by Old Tyke on Sunday 5th March 10:28

[GSalt]

Old Tyke said:

For some background info I have a popular hobby blog which receives approx 5000 hits per month on average.

Are you commercialising your blog? ie. do you receive any income (even if it's just to pay for hosting) from Adwords, endorsements, affiliate links, etc? If so, you could be breaking the Flickr Terms of Service - or at east the last version of the TOS I read, which was a while ago.

As a Flickr user, I'm more pissed off by bloggers and the like not having the courtesy to ask first - and I generally don't get upset when it's used hosted on Flickr (the way you describe), but those that download and rehost on their own blog website can really wind me up. I try and stick Pixsy on to those clowns.

[Old Tyke]

GSalt said:

Old Tyke said:

For some background info I have a popular hobby blog which receives approx 5000 hits per month on average.

Are you commercialising your blog? ie. do you receive any income (even if it's just to pay for hosting) from Adwords, endorsements, affiliate links, etc? If so, you could be breaking the Flickr Terms of Service - or at east the last version of the TOS I read, which was a while ago.

As a Flickr user, I'm more pissed off by bloggers and the like not having the courtesy to ask first - and I generally don't get upset when it's used hosted on Flickr (the way you describe), but those that download and rehost on their own blog website can really wind me up. I try and stick Pixsy on to those clowns.

No, it doesn't generate any revenue, I simply do it as a hobby and get enjoyment from doing that.

I agree about downloading and rehosting the pics as their own - that's poor form and you're right to be annoyed. Sometimes though I can understand why they self-host them as photographers often have a habit of suddenly deleting their accounts and you end up with a bunch of red x placeholders.


I answered my own question about the intellectual property and copyright. It's already been tested in court, with Google of all people right at the centre of it. The section on inline links and hierachy of links on this page make for interesting reading : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_aspects_of...

Wiki said:

Use an img-src link to the image at the proprietor's Web page, to make your page appear to contain the image.

Ordinarily you would place your own text above, next to, and below the image—making the image appear as it does at the immediate right. The image from an img-src link looks like the image from a file copied to your own server, even though the image (i.e., its code) is actually stored on the remote server of the other website. There is no copy of the image file on your server. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit considered this fact of crucial significance in the Perfect 10 case, discussed subsequently in this article. The court held that, when Google provided links to images, Google did not violate the provisions of the copyright law prohibiting unauthorized reproduction and distribution of copies of a work: "Because Google's computers do not store the photographic images, Google does not have a copy of the images for purposes of the Copyright Act."[2] (This fact about image storage is also true of all links that follow in this list.)

[...]

This expedient has been challenged as copyright infringement. See the Arriba Soft and Perfect 10 cases (below). In the Perfect 10 case, Perfect 10 argued that Google's Image pages caused viewers to believe they were seeing the images on Google's website. The court brushed this argument aside: "While in-line linking and framing may cause some computer users to believe they are viewing a single Google webpage, the Copyright Act, unlike the Trademark Act, does not protect a copyright holder against acts that cause consumer confusion."

So in short, it's considered "fair use" to use a thumbnail image with click through hyperlink and does not violate provisions of the copyright law so long as the image remains on the content owner's server.

Edited by Old Tyke on Sunday 5th March 13:01

[Lynchie999]

if they don't want people to use them fairly, then they shouldn't have them on flickr....

[Rogue86]

Old Tyke said:

Rogue86 I have done already, but I'm still going to be sued for many millions of pounds and they are still frothing over it.

If you've already honoured their request and removed it, then your best bet is to stop further contact. It could be that they're trying to bully you into an invoice. If they thought what they were saying had any legs legally, you would be hearing from their solicitor and not from an angry tog.

[GSalt]

Old Tyke said:

[I agree about downloading and rehosting the pics as their own - that's poor form and you're right to be annoyed. Sometimes though I can understand why they self-host them as photographers often have a habit of suddenly deleting their accounts and you end up with a bunch of red x placeholders.

It's annoying when an image is removed, but that the photographer's right.

I've got a couple of rehosting cases going through Pixsy at the moment, but it's the magazine thieves that have been most lucrative for me.

[Craikeybaby]

As a photographer and blogger I agree with the OP here. Embedding the original content into a blog is fine, especially if you are crediting the photographer in addition.

I hadn't heard about Pixsy - it looks like a really useful tool! I will be getting my Flickr account syced with that!