All that Flickrs is not Free

February 13, 2009

birmingham.jpg

Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository.

That’s what Wikipedia says, so it must be true, but here’s the great thing about Flickr: it’s free. You can use anything you like from Flickr, so long as you provide the requisite credit. Can’t you?

Well, up to a point. Flickr users can tag images with a standard “All rights reserved” copyright notice, and if they do, guess what? They’ve reserved all their intellectual property rights.

This appears to have been forgotten by the BBC, who recently used an image of the Birmingham skyline, found on Flickr, on News 24. The photo was taken by Michael Bailey and was used to represent a “live” backdrop of the city. So far, so typically BBC, only the corporation omitted to ask Bailey for permission.

The matter is reported by Paul Smith at Bitter Wallet. Happily for Bailey, he appears to have obtained a reasonable licence fee. Unhappily for the BBC, a certain disharmony between the assiduous enforcement of its IP and a cavalier attitude to that of third parties is as plain as, well, the Birmingham city skyline.

Photo of Birmingham city skyline by Brett Wilde – who tagged it as free for all. 

 

2 Responses to “All that Flickrs is not Free”

Posted by:
Nigel H on February 13, 2009 at 4:38 pm

I’m always impressed by the quality of photos and images Blade uses to illuminate his stabs – and by the fact he evidently deftly sorts all the required IP consents. AttaBoy!

Posted by:
Credit be where Flickr’s due | Professional Services PR Firm on June 26, 2009 at 8:30 am

[...] Daily Mail has a habit of using images from Flickr sans acknowledgement of their provenance. As has previously been noted here, all that Flickrs is not free, and a sophisticated media organisation such as the Mail must know [...]

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The Sea: A Holy Hush?

July 25, 2010

For a certain poet, an unspoiled stretch of seaside was like “the holy hush there is in the land on Christmas morning. The roads fairly empty, the sky almost free of aeroplanes and you begin to hear and see and smell once more”.

But who uttered these lines?

(It’s a Monday, and this is your starter for 10 – and yes, we’re fresh to the metropolis, from a coastal sojourn.)

Alastair Brett: Certainly Not Certifiably Insane

July 23, 2010

The following words appeared in a Times article in 2003, about the paper’s recently departed Head of Legal, Alastair Brett. They’ve been doing the rounds in the wake of Brett’s sudden exit last week, though without attribution. Who, we wonder, wrote them? Two suspects present themselves – our own occasional scribe, Alex Wade, and Dominic Carman, son of the late, great George (an old mucker of Brett’s). Or was someone else the author? Whatever: the fact remains that Brett was a fearless, tenacious and excellent newspaper lawyer, a man whose commitment to press freedom coursed through every vein in his body. We don’t know the precise reasons for his departure, but he will be missed.

“[He] is known for his impassioned commitment to press freedom – so impassioned that he has been described as “certifiably insane”. Capable of an intimidatory snarl or two, and prepared to be stubborn, Brett is far from mad. He is erudite, charming (so the ladies say), and not known for sitting on the fence. If his sanity has, tongue firmly in cheek, been questioned, one thing not open to doubt is that Brett epitomises the old school Fleet Street lawyer”.

Pictured: Fleet Street -  not the same as it used to be.

Black in the black if he wants to sue for libel

July 23, 2010

A curious observation leaps at us from Roy Greenslade’s piece about whether Conrad Black, shortly to roam the high-class hotels of the world again as a free man, will return to the UK and carry out his threat to sue his biographer, Tom Bower, for libel:

I somehow doubt that he would have the appetite, or the funds, to pursue a libel action, but Black marches to the sound of his own drummer, so he might just do that. Even if he did, my money would still be on Bower winning.

Hang on, Roy – what about suing via a no win, no fee deal? Funds or no funds, a CFA would see Conrad through – though maybe he’ll remember what happened to the last press baron who sued Bower. Anyone for Richard Desmond’s curious dalliance with libel?

Pictured: the kind of place in which Conrad Black may be spotted (if not at the Royal Courts of Justice).