Those who read photography blogs may have already come across the dustup, but the discussion over [ab]use of the Flickr API and application developers not respecting copyright on content should be of interest to the web developers out there as well.
The discussion centers around the realization that last weekend Every Flickr Photo Ended Up on Sale as cell phone wallpaper at MyxerTones.com — regardless of what copyright terms were designated on the photos — including All Rights Reserved and Creative Commons Non-Commercial flags. After complaints the store quickly shut down its Flickr integration, but its not the only usage of images that bothers some photographers.
As with all publishing on the web there’s a balance that both individual copyright holders need to think about and realization that if you publish it the bits /will/ be out there for people to take. There is a similar balance that those building web sites and other tools need to consider between ease of use and ability to protect the integrity of their systems and users. The interesting part of the current discussion is that there are so many ‘end users’ participating and those people not commonly thought of when considering and designing APIs.
Hi, Chris! Thanks for writing this post; it enhances the discussion that Jim Goldstein created at his blog. The recent activity of my company, Myxer.com, was one of the catalysts for Jim’s article, and — as your post points out — we immediately disabled our Flickr integration when we learned our service was distributing photos beyond the Creative Commons license.
Myk Willis, Myxer’s CEO, recently wrote a post on his personal blog about our Flickr integration, and the creative and philosophical intent powering it. It can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/5bws7f
I encourage you and your audience to read it, if only to learn more about the integration, to understand that Myxer did not sell any of the photos accessed via the Flickr API, and to see what Myxer has learned from this experience. As Myk writes in his post, these are “trying times for a massive number of creative people whose footing has been destabilized in this era of instant, zero-cost distribution of digital content on the internet.”
We’re all finding our footing here, and we appreciate the insight you and other bloggers are bringing to the conversation. If you or your readers need any further information about Myxer or future iterations of our Flickr integration, please feel free to contact me personally.
Best wishes,
—J.C. Hutchins
Comment by: J.C. Hutchins @ Jul 9, 09:12 AM #Social Media Marketing Manager, Myxer.com
jc.hutchins@myxer.com
Thanks for stopping by J.C.
It surely is a balancing act for anyone building these tools between the need for complete access to make the API or service worth while [make 3rd party developers happy, bring in interest, prevent the need for screen scraping to get around flaws], and maintaining integrity of the system and supporting those who are filling your site with content.
Its nice to get that POV from someone in the middle of this particular case.
Comment by: Chris Casciano @ Jul 11, 07:17 PM #