A recent post from slashdot alerted me to an interesting and very depressing situation developing with the online photo sharing site Flick'r.
The Scoop:
Photographer Rebekka Guoleifsdottir who posts her work regularly to Flick'r, had some of her photos taken and used without her permission by the gallery Only Dreemin. Long story short, after attempting legal action, Rebekka created a new image which represented her protest against the theft of her work, and posted that image on Flick'r as well. Supposedly more than 400 people offered comments and support to Rebekka regarding her plight. Not much of a story right? Well it wasnt, at least until Flick'r deleted the protest image and all the comments associated with it.
Flick'r response to the deletion (from Rebekka's blog):
“Flickr is not a venue for to you harass, abuse,
impersonate, or intimidate others. If we receive a valid
complaint about your conduct, we will send you a warning or
terminate your account.” Saucy.
Now by the letter of the law, the terms of service for Yahoo (Flickr's big poppi) does have a clause regarding the blah blah blah blah blah.
I didnt see the thread with the original comments or the original image. So I wont pass judgement on whether or not Flick'r was within the rights of their TOS to do what they did. Ok... Im lying. I passed judgement ;-)
Regardless, this whole issue raises a starling reminder that Web 2.0 isnt a pure as it might always seem. Yes yes we all know about companies making hiring decisions based on face-book profiles and such. But this casts one of those dark shadows over the beauty of Web 2.0. All the collaboration, and community and communication that rallys behind an image... gone.
Like I said - I didnt see the comments or the page of protest. Maybe it was slanderous and malicious and seething with the pure evil of 1000 generations
To me, it really doesnt matter. The wakeup call just went out that behind the beautiful utopia of the read write web, the big dawgs of the game lurk... red pens and erasers in hand.
But censorship is only part of the scary problem here. Sure its great to be able to share photos with your aunt and uncle in Kalamazoo. But creating a phenomenon like Flick'r also takes the commitment of artists and professionals like Rebekka sharing their work with the world, with an expectation ... a trust... that that work is not merely being displayed to that world with a spotlight, ripe for the taking. Break that trust... and what do you think happens to the community?
EDIT:
After doing a little more digging, I came across a thread on the flick'r forums regarding this situation. According the the flick'r community manager, it was an "operator error" and an apoligy has been made to Rebekka for the hasty action taken again her thread. Nice that Flick'r owned up, but I cant say it makes me feel all that much better from a high level perspective.
Unfortunately, this is only too typical of a Yahoo! web property.
Yahoo! is quickly establishing itself the internet's largest corporate arbiter of what constitutes acceptable content and what deserves to be censored.
This Flick'r example is none-too-surprising, and pales in comparison to Yahoo's attempt to pass off Y!Buzz as "social media", despite the fact it is 100% censored by editors, as well as the fact that users cannot submit content of share comments with the community. In other words, it is anything but "social" media, and is typical of a company seeking to monopolize accessible information on the web.