Updated: they have suspended their RSS syndication.

This may end up with my quitting Flickr finally.

Yesterday, a local photographer I know Andrew Ferguson realized that photos being posted to the Vancouver Flickr group were being streamed automatically onto a blog called Thatsvancouver.com (which has a series of sister blogs for other cities) and alerted others in this thread. A quick look confirmed that they had several of my photos as well. All photos show up with the text: "__(photographer)___ has submitted to the pool", when really they submitted to the Vancouver pool, not consented to have it autoblogged by this other site.

Thatsvancouver.com and its sister sites are using the Flickr RSS feed for the Vancouver group (and I assume for other groups) to provide free content on its sites. The RSS feed is a convenient way for users of Flickr to be alerted when new content is posted but also, it seems, is more than convenient for sites to grab content to put on their sites. Browse that blog and you'll see it's a series of posts with nothing but other people's photos. They do link back to the original Flickr submission with attribution to the user's account and keep the tags but otherwise, it is automatically added to the blog. No attempt was made to ask for permission and even if the photo has a specific license such as All Rights Reserved, it is ignored.

Yes, it's old news

Obviously, this type of hotlinking has been going on for some time and many people don't care about it. If your photos are CC (Creative Commons), then you probably even like it. However, because RSS feed linking ignores licensing, then if you want to guard your content you're pooched on Flickr.

When I contacted the site about removing my content they wrote me back a polite note claiming Fair Use and that they had no way of distinguishing licensing because they were just taking the RSS feed which they say has no licensing information to filter for, in effect blaming Flickr for letting them do it.

Thanks for nothing

When I contacted Flickr, Flickr said they had no control over third party sites -- which is clearly a dodge since they can control access FROM third party sites. If I can do it, then they can.

It was pointed out to me that because of the scale of Flickr and all of the sites probably poaching form it that it would be unlikely that blocking could be done.

The Flickr employee then suggested I rotate my images to break the link to that site for that post. Well, thank you, but that is not feasible when it involves dozens of your images. Also, since I use my Flickr account for graphics in my blog, that would mean having to update all of my posts as well because some other site took them without permission. In the case of another photographer, he counted over 70 of his images appearing on that site including images of his children.

Fair Use

"Fair Use" has become a convenient excuse for any site that wants to take free content and present it as their own. In the case of this site, they do not include any commentary, any other content surrounding my photo, my photo does not illustrate an article, there is nothing to show that they have any value in that site besides the photos they present. It is a big gallery of other people's photos AND they have advertising. In other words, content they have taken for free is supporting revenue.

Flickr is an open house

Flickr has come to be known as a source for free content. The lack of true privacy or rights-managed tools combined with the prevailing attitude by Flickr-users themselves has encouraged this. Unfortunately, the very power of Flickr to put your images in front of a worldwide audience also devalues them. Which is interesting as Yahoo/Flickr tries experiments such as involving Getty in licensing photos from Flickr users. I wonder how Getty will feel if the photos they pay licensing for are streamed gratis to other sites? The response from the Flickr employee seems to indicate that they don't particular care to safeguard content.

I don't think you can have a Flickr which is both a sharing phenomenon and one that also protects the rights of photographers. Flickr puts that responsibility on you and at this point I think my responsibility is to remove anything that is of value. Flickr is an open house through which anyone can walk in and help themselves.