A quick post from me today, as some changes are taking place over at the photo service Flickr, which will be relevant to many.
Flickr has long offered generous data storage to all photographers (and other providers of images) who choose to use the service. In recent years this has been as much as 1 Terabyte of data, a huge amount of valuable space!
But now this is now changing following Yahoo’s sale of Flickr to SmugMug not long ago.
What’s changing, and why does it matter to you?
Photographers and other providers of images are the people who will see the really dramatic changes and need to take urgent action before 8th January 2019.
If you’re a user of Flickr photos, the burden of proof is with you to show that you’re not breaching copyright, so there are steps you need to take now, too.
Photographers and other rights holders
That Terabyte of data is no longer going to be available free of charge, but will instead be reduced down to just 1,000 images unless you sign up for Flickr’s Pro account, which involves paying a subscription.
But here’s the urgent part: if by 8th January 2019 you don’t upgrade or reduce your account to fewer than 1,000 photos, then beginning from February 2019 Flickr will start to DELETE your photos for you!
Yep, that’s right, your photos will actually begin to disappear from the Flickr site, unless you take action to reduce the numbers or upgrade.
Off the top of my head I can’t think of any other online service provider who has deleted someone else’s copyright materials, after promising such a huge amount of free storage. Will photographers comply before the deadline? Will any miss the news, and suddenly find Flickr has unilaterally deleted their work? What might the legal consequences be?
Certainly, if some of your own photos are currently on Flickr, I’d advise you take a close look at your account and check whether you’re going to be exceeding the 1,000 image limit, either now or in the near future.
Make sure you don’t leave it too long.
What about users?
Many use Flickr as a useful resource for ‘free to use’ images. If that’s you, I’d advise that from here onwards you keep really, really good records.
Whenever you use a Flickr image, make sure you keep copies of the rights information you find on the site, especially if the image is under one of the various Creative Commons licences such as the “CC BY” licence which only requires you to acknowledge the source.
Remember that someone can challenge your use of their copyright photographs at any point after you have used them. That means you could have problems if you’re relying on a link to the Flickr website to show that your use was justified. The link and the image itself might just be gone from the site. The onus will be on you to justify your use, so this could cause you trouble.
As always with rights issues, keeping fantastic records may not be glamorous, but it really matters!