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 [...]

Comments

Please submit comments to Swordplay below.

Not so right said Fred

February 2, 2012
fred hat

So Farewell, then, Sir Fred Goodwin.

Now you are just Fred.

Not Right Said Fred, but plain Fred.

The Forfeiture Committee did for you.

No one had heard of it before,

But Dave said it had to act, and it did.

Trouble is that no one knows what to think.

Is it ‘Alas, poor Fred‘,

Or ‘Hurray! Sir Fred is dead!’?

We don’t know.

Do you?

By A. Mob, aged 1,378 and a half.

London Goes AWOL

January 31, 2012
CNN

STOP PRESS:

Fed up with being stuck on the Thames in south-east England, London yesterday decided to move. In a dramatic gesture which augurs ill for the Olympics, the city upped sticks and relocated to East Anglia.

Lawyers were not consulted about the move, and the city’s precise motivation remains unclear. However, financiers fear that London’s decision is a sign that it wishes to downsize. Moreover, a source from London said: “We no longer want to be Britain’s seat of power. If the Scots can deregulate, why can’t we? East Anglia is a nice place where nothing happens. It’s time for a quiet life. Please respect our right to privacy.”

Elsewhere, Birmingham did not do anything, but Manchester was seen to be packing its bags. “There’s an opportunity for us,” said Manchester. “We can become London.”

East Anglia said: “We don’t mind. It’ll be refreshing to be associated with something other than fens and flatness.”

A cartologist at CNN, which broke the extraordinary news, was later fired.

An excellent ad if ever there was one

January 25, 2012
legovader

We seem to be visually led this week but sometimes words proliferate far too much and letting an image do the talking is no bad thing. That’s another way of saying that ACCESS Agency’s work with Lego is absolutely top drawer.