MicrostockGroup

This is why I steer clear away from any of those free photo sharing websites like Flickr. Even web sized images can be taken and used. There are countless stories of people's images being ripped off from Flickr. Everyone knows how hard it is to find your own work being used from legit sources...

One thing to note in this: the person cited in the article, Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir, is Flickr's Lise Gagne - an article in the Wall Street Journal even referred to her as "the web's top photographer". Personally, I take exception to this, and view much of her Flickr fame to be the result of her being young, attractive, and quite willing to publish provocative self-portraits in a predominantly male environment. Her work can be good at times, but not that good - there are very many other Flickrites who are much, much better. Give yourself a two minute break from things and click here to see her work.

Also looks like IS handled the situation well while Flickr handled it very poorly.

Microsoft is about revenue and profits. Yahoo is instant traffic and advertising revenue for them.  According to Dan Heller, Flickr has no revenue model or goals within Yahoo. With Microsoft, anything that doesn't generate revenue, or can't be made to generate revenue, will be eliminated.

That has been the rumour for a long time, but it would require some serious restructuring. Another side of that is, that I believe there is a clause in their contract that make all photos uploaded available for use by the owners of Flickr without charge. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

There was a case in Germany, must have been around a year ago, about a magazine that used photos from Flickr, many of them, without paying a dime. If I remember correctly, the article was about Flickr, but that doesn't change anything.

Forgive my ignorance ... but why do so many people use Flickr?

All right ... I can understand that they may want to share photos with family and friends and Filckr is a convenient central point from which to do it.

But, apart from that?

-- Selling your images to a big, big company like Microsoft? Yeah, it's happened, but I guess the chances are pretty slim. About the same as winning the lottery.

-- Getting feedback from others on your photos? Most of the images I've seen on there are unreconstituted c**p and yet they get comments like "Hey, way cool!!!!!" What use is that?

Any other reason that I'm missing?

I think ego is a key factor for a lot of people at Flickr. Just about everyone likes the constant reassurance that they are indeed good. It's a very good place to meet people, too.

Is it really necessary to demean those who believe in God in order to get to your point?

He didn't demean those who believe in God, only creationists. Huge difference. I don't know what creationism had to do with lesbian marriage other than right-wing republicans have taken both up as causes (though creationism/intelligent design is falling out of favor, and rightfully so).

Quote from Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir:
So than I wonder.....how did the thief get the model release?

There is an Article in Feb. Pop Photo magazine on just this subject. It is no secret that photos are stolen from Flickr.  If they do nothing to protect you, why stay with them? If you live in a bad neighborhood and get robbed because you left your door unlocked is it not your own fault? Protect yourself. There must be a better option than flickr. Clearly not Istock or any other sites fault if images get stolen and used by someone else.

As much as Flickr does little to protect photographers, the photographers who use Flickr set themselves up for this sort of thing by uploading high-res images. If you want to use Flickr for feedback, promotion, whatever, then fine, go for it. But why not just upload a 400 x 600 image instead? Maybe even throw a little watermark on there or something, maybe save it down to 70% jpg.

There are many ways to use Flickr without setting yourself up to become a victim.