DailyDirt: Does It Take A Village To Teach Artificial Intelligence?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The accomplishments of artificial intelligence are making it a popular topic in the news again, both for its wins and its (apparent) failures. General artificial intelligence hasn't quite lived up to its full potential yet, but more open source AI projects could help speed up development. Here are just a few reminders that open source AI projects are making progress -- hopefully towards a more 'John Henry' type of AI and less of a scary Skynet program.

• Google is sharing some of its artificial intelligence capabilities -- like image recognition, speech translation, etc. Maybe people will find cool new uses for AI, and hopefully, some of the machine learning bugs will be caught faster. [url]
• Yahoo hasn't been getting too much positive press lately (for the health of its business), but it also released its own open source AI tools (aka CaffeOnSpark AI engine) recently. Yahoo still has a lot of Flickr image data to help train its deep learning software, but selling off Yahoo's "core business" could have an effect on Yahoo's AI projects. [url]
• OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company that has just set up new offices in San Francisco. It has $1 billion in funding from several sources, aiming for a long-term benefit to humanity from artificial intelligence projects. [url]
• China's main search company, Baidu, has released its own open source AI software -- used to build systems like Deep Speech 2 which recognizes human speech better than some humans (at least for short phrases or messages). Baidu's code is called Warp-CTC, and you can play around with it all you like -- but you'll probably need access to some heavy-duty hardware to make your own HAL9000. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: ai, artificial intelligence, cloud, deep learning, deep speech 2, image recognition, john henry, machine learning, open source, speech recognition
Companies: baidu, flickr, google, microsoft, openai, yahoo

Photographer Loses Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against Mapmaker That Used His Photo With His Explicit Permission

from the but-I-didn't-think-anyone-would-do-the-thing-I-told-them-they-could-do! dept

A far-too-common story of alleged copyright infringement by a corporation comes to an unexpected resolution. Photographer Art Dragulis took a photo of a rather rustic Maryland scene and uploaded it to Flickr. (from the filing)

Roughly four years later, he discovered Kappa Map Group was using his photo for the cover of its Montgomery County atlas, unbeknownst to him, and as such, also unrecompensed.


Lawsuit-filing ensued. Dragulis claimed Kappa Map Group had no right to use his photo commericially. Seems an almost open-and-shut case, what with any number of entities deciding "anything showing up in a Google image search" = "royalty-free stock photography." And in most cases, this would have been rather straightforward if the photographer himself hadn't undermined his infringement claims years before he ever raised them.

As the opinion notes, any copyright protections Dragulis might have enjoyed were explicitly waived by his choice of licensing back in 2008.

Plaintiff alleges that defendant infringed his copyright in the photograph because it “copied Plaintiff’s work and made derivatives of the work without Plaintiff’s authorization in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 501.” Id. ¶ 22. But plaintiff uploaded the photograph to a public photo-sharing website, where he did not assert exclusive rights to his copyrighted image, and he instead opted to license the work and make it available for use by others without compensation.

Dragulis chose to license this picture under Creative Commons BY-SA-2.0, which allows commercial use of the photo in exchange for attribution. As Kappa pointed out in its initial response to Dragulis' filing, it followed the terms of the license explicitly.

Kappa used the image in the Kappa Map in good faith based upon the representations that the image was licensed for use in commercial applications. On the back cover of the map, Kappa provided the “Attribution” and “ShareAlike” data for the Work dictated by the CC BY-SA-2.0 license: “Photo: Swain’s Lock, Montgomery Co., MD; Photographer: Carly Lesser & Art Drauglis, Creative Commons, CC-BY-SA-2.0.”

So, everything was exactly what Dragulis wanted, except that he apparently never expected a commercial company to take him up on his CC offer. When one did, it was time to sue. The final opinion notes that Dragulis seems upset with what happened but can't really blame anyone but himself for the outcome.

Plaintiff repeatedly voices consternation in his pleadings about defendant’s distribution of the publication that displayed his work on its cover for profit, but of the many licenses available to choose from, plaintiff selected the one that specifically authorized commercial use. So the only issue before the Court in Count I is whether defendant – which gave plaintiff full credit for the work it displayed on the cover of its publication – complied with the technical terms of the license under which plaintiff published the work. The Court finds that it did.

Dragulis heads a little further into the weeds with his arguments, claiming that the "share-alike" portion of the CC license demanded Kappa Map Groups offer its atlas under similar terms -- i.e., for free and with a similar license attached. The court finds this unpersuasive, pointing out the CC license terminology Dragulis invoked only refers to "derivative works," which KGM's atlas isn't. Instead, the court finds the atlas to be a "collective work," one that incorporates the photo "in its entirety in unmodified form."

Dragulis loses on all counts, even with the court entertaining his very belatedly-raised argument that the minimal cropping of his original photo by Kappa somehow made the use of his photo a "derivative work."

If there's a moral to this legal incident, it's this: know the terms of your licensing before you agree to use it. If you want to use a more altruistic licensing form like those offered by Creative Commons, by all means, do so. But don't act like a commercial entity owes you something for complying with the terms you expressly agreed to. Licensor's remorse isn't a legally-recognized tort.

Filed Under: art dragulis, copyright, licenses, photographs, share alike
Companies: creative commons, flickr, kappa map group

Flickr Now Officially Supports Public Domain Dedications

from the very-nice-to-see dept

As we had noted in our story about Elon Musk declaring all SpaceX photos public domain, Flickr (where most of those photos were hosted) did not allow an official public domain dedication. And while it offered Creative Commons licenses, the CC0 public domain dedication was not among the options. Flickr is not the only site like that -- many sites that offer CC licensing don't include a CC0 option. Last week, there was an interesting piece by Jessamyn West exploring why it was that Flickr chose not to offer a public domain option. She found an old forum post by Flickr founder (and now Slack founder/CEO) Stewart Butterfield, where he explained the reasoning as such:

The reasons we don’t have a PD option: (i) Unlike CC licenses, you can’t take PD back — once it is done, it is done. I spec’d out a three stage confirmation (including typing out that you understand what it means) but this was seemed like too much and we didn’t want the support hassle. People are free to use the description field to specify their PD desires. (ii) There are liabilities that we don’t want to take on if we allow people to claim something is public domain without actual checking the chain of title — if they don’t own it in the first place, we can get in trouble. (This is also true of CC images, but at least that can be changed after the fact and there is less of a chance of the image just “escaping” in the wild.)

Of course, those reasons really don't make that much sense in reality. You can't really take back CC licenses either. The very first thing that Creative Commons tells potential licensors is that the licenses are not revocable. Once you grant a CC license, it stays that way.

Thankfully, the Yahoo folks who are currently running Flickr realized that this was an opportunity -- and have now announced that it has added both "public domain" listings and a CC0 dedication as options when uploading images:

We’ve been proud to support Creative Commons licenses since 2004, and we’ve become an important repository of U.S. Government works and historic images from galleries, libraries, archives, and museums around the world (check out The Flickr Commons for examples).

But we’ve heard from our community that we’re missing two important designations: Public Domain and Creative Commons 0 (CC0). Many members of our community want to be able to upload images that are no longer protected by copyright and correctly tag them as being in the Public Domain, or they want to release their copyright entirely under CC0.

So, starting today we’re happy to support these two new options. One of the first accounts on Flickr to change its designation was SpaceX, which has uploaded more than a hundred gorgeous images of its launches. These extraordinary photos are now available for others to freely use, enhance, and promulgate without restriction under copyright law.

This is a great move -- and we're thrilled to see Flickr take such a stand (even if it should have happened years ago). Hopefully other platforms will follow suit.

Filed Under: cc0, copyright, flickr, hosting services, licensing, photos, public domain
Companies: flickr, spacex, yahoo

Flickr Plans To Sell Creative Commons Photos And That's Okay...

from the permissionless-culture-is-okay dept

There appear to be a lot of people up in arms over Flickr's announced plans to sell wall art prints of various Creative Commons-licensed images on the site. The uproar is mostly because people who chose a license like Creative Commons' attribution license, and not a "non-commercial" license are not going to see any money from any images that Flickr (owned by Yahoo) sells. And that leads to angry posts like this one arguing that selling the work is "cheesy, desperate and not at all fine with me."

Except... the license that was chosen says that, yes, this is fine with you. This doesn't necessarily mean that Flickr/Yahoo's decision was smart. The way it's being done appears to be upsetting lots of people, and upsetting the core people who make your service work is -- generally speaking -- not smart. But this leads to a bigger issue, one that is highlighted nicely in a post on all of this by Tom Lee, in which he notes that part of open licensing is giving up control so that others can benefit. And this is a key point that is missed by many, unfortunately:

Open licensing is about giving up control so that other people can benefit. That’s all it will cost you: control. Having control feels nice. But you should ask yourself what it really gets you. And you should think about what others might gain if you were able to let go.

Furthermore, he notes that what Flickr is doing here really will benefit lots of folks:

Flickr’s sale of prints does not deprive photographers of their work or money. Users have the same ability to use their work that they always had. The vast majority would never have taken the steps necessary to profit from their work, so print sales do not deprive them of money. When a user really expects to sell prints, they should avoid Creative Commons licensing, which, as I’ve mentioned, is easily done.

Flickr’s sale of prints provides benefits to other people. People who work for and own Flickr make money. The vendors producing and delivering the prints make money. And people who buy prints get to enjoy works of art.

Parker Higgins posted some further thoughts on Twitter that are worth noting as well. Many of the people who are upset about this are angry that Yahoo didn't ask them about this first. But as Higgins notes, that's just bringing back the idea of permission-based culture, rather than recognizing that a big part of the value of Creative Commons (or any other such open license system or public domain) is getting beyond permission culture and recognizing that in giving up control, there are lots of benefits.

Free culture licenses aren't supposed to flag that you're a cooperative player in permissions culture. They're supposed to do the opposite.

— Parker Higgins (@xor) December 1, 2014

Now, one could make a reasonable cultural argument that Yahoo/Flickr should have approached this situation with more caution -- recognizing how some people would likely respond to this, no matter how reasonable or legal it is. If I were in charge of the program at Yahoo, that likely would have been my approach. But, the troubling end result of this is that it may just lead more people to slap a "non-commercial" license on their Creative Commons works, greatly limiting the kinds of benefits that are out there, without providing any real benefit to themselves. In some ways, this gets to the heart of the problems we've noted with Creative Commons in the past -- especially the fact that many incorrectly assume that all CC-licensed material is only for non-commercial use. It's also why we think there's a strong argument that Creative Commons should either drop or totally rebrand the non-commercial offering, so that this branding confusion is dealt with. The anger in this situation is just a rehash of that branding confusion -- and the end result is that it reinforces this idea of "permissions" culture, rather than highlighting the benefits of sharing culture without first needing permission -- even if for commercial reasons.

Filed Under: attribution, copyright, creative commons, flickr, non-commercial, photos, sales
Companies: flickr, yahoo

Flickr Finally Realizes That Not All DMCA Takedowns Are Legit

from the about-freaking-time dept

A few months ago, we noted how in certain cases Flickr would completely delete images (and comments) when it received a DMCA takedown notice. That meant that even if the takedown was bogus -- as so many are -- after you contested the takedown and could put back the image, you probably lost everything else on that page. That's kind of ridiculous. As Jake Rome alerts us, Yahoo (owner of Flickr) finally realized that perhaps it should change its policy and, instead, put the targeted image in limbo to allow the uploader to contest the takedown:

We want to let you know that we have implemented a global change in the standard takedown process that will benefit the whole Flickr community going forward.

When a photo is removed from the site based on a notice of alleged copyright infringement, we will temporarily show a placeholder and the member will have an opportunity to respond before the image is made unavailable.

If the alleged copyright infringement is found to be fraudulent, the image in question will be restored, and the photopage will look like before.

It's really quite amazing that it took this long for Flickr to realize this was needed.

Filed Under: copyfraud, dmca, takedown
Companies: flickr, yahoo

A Manifesto For Creativity In The Modern Era

from the join-in dept

Multiple people have passed along this fantastic manifesto of modern creativity that was put together by five curators of an exhibition for Les Rencontres Arles Photographie called "From Here On."

One friend noted just how inspiring that graphic alone was, but reading the more detailed manifesto is worthwhile as well. It talks about just how much the internet and digital technologies have changes our lives, and changed the way art and creativity works -- in undoubtedly positive ways. Here's just a snippet of the larger piece:

The growth of the Internet and the proliferation of sites for searching out and/or sharing images online—Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook, Google Images, eBay, to name only the best-known—now mean a plethora of visual resources that was inconceivable as little as ten years ago: a phenomenon comparable to the advent of running water and gas in big cities in the nineteenth century. We all know just how thoroughly those amenities altered people’s way of life in terms of everyday comfort and hygiene—and now, right in our own homes, we have an image-tap that’s refashioning our visual habits just as radically. In the course of art history, periods when image accessibility has been boosted by technological innovation have always been rich in major visual advances: improved photomechanical printing techniques and the subsequent press boom of the 1910s-1920s, for instance, paved the way for photomontage. Similar upheavals in the art field accompanied the rise of engraving as a popular medium in the nineteenth century, the arrival of TV in the 1950s—and the coming of the Internet today.

Digital appropriationism
Across-the-board appropriation on the one hand plus hyper-accessibility of images on the other: a pairing that would prove particularly fertile and stimulating for the art field. Beginning with the first years of the new millennium—Google Images launched in 2001, Google Maps in 2004 and Flickr the same year—artists jumped at the new technologies, and since then more and more of them have been taking advantage of the wealth of opportunities offered by the Internet. Gleefully appropriating their online finds, they edit, adapt, displace, add and subtract. What artists used to look for in nature, in urban flaneries, in leafing through magazines and rummaging in flea markets, they now find on the Internet, that new wellspring of the vernacular and inexhaustible fount of ideas and wonders.

What I love most about this is how inclusive it is, and how much of it is about recognizing and embracing what an amazingly creative time this is for artists. All too often, we hear of artists who decry such things, who complain about the fact that their club doesn't feel as exclusive any more. For artists and an art exhibit to not just embrace, but joyfully celebrate the way creativity works today, while recognizing how these tools mean that anyone and everyone are creating art all the time, is really wonderful to see.

Filed Under: appropriation, art, creativity, manifesto, sharing
Companies: ebay, facebook, flickr, google, photobucket

Dave Gorman, Victim Of A Bogus DMCA Takedown, Highlights Flickr's Horrible DMCA Takedown Policy

from the press-'DEL'-to-shrink-your-user-base dept

Dave Gorman, a Flickr user whose photo was taken down by a bogus DMCA notice, is fighting with Flickr to get it to, if nothing else, change the way it handles takedown requests. Gorman's photo, along with all of its comments and views, was deleted based on the "strength" of a scatter-shot DMCA issued by Degban, supposedly on behalf of porn producers Wasteland.

Obviously, his photo was not property of Wasteland. While Degban's CEO continues to claim this is a result of having its software hacked (despite the fact that the alleged hacking occured 12 days after the takedown notice was issued), Flickr has basically responded with... nothing.

Flickr's system for handling DMCA requests is even more screwed up than the DMCA process itself, if that can be believed. Gorman, artist that he is, has crafted a handy flowchart illustrating just how screwed Flickr users are if they should find themselves on the receiving end of a DMCA takedown.



On the upside, if you are a US resident and the takedown is issued by a US-based company, all that will happen is the image itself will be removed and replaced with a message stating "THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO A CLAIM OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT." Once everything is sorted out, it's simply a matter of restoring the photo if the DMCA notice is challenged successfully. (Taken from Flickr's Help Forum.)

What does this mean?

-- US members will still receive a warning that contains the name of the complainant and now will include a link to the image where the content has been removed.

-- The original image will be stored by Flickr. Should we receive notice from the US Copyright Team to replace the original, we will be able to do so. *** Please note will be able to do so as long as the original photo.gne page is left in place. If a member chooses to delete the photo.gne page we'll assume that they're not interested further activity like restitution of the image. ***

-- The existing title, description, comments, tags, notes, etc. will be available. The image can still be added to sets and groups.

-- Blog This, Edit in Picnic, "replace this image" and the EXIF info will be disabled.

-- The image will be flagged NIPSA and as such will not return in search results nor be available in the API.


For the rest of the world

-- The existing process of photo removal will continue. We're going to begin reaching out to the other regional copyright teams to see if they would like us to enact this feature where they are. Given that the counter-claim process is unique to the DMCA, we'll need to work out how image restoration will work elsewhere.

Unfortunately, should you be a resident of any other country in the world, Flickr will continue to simply delete your photo and everything attached to it. Even if, as in Gorman's case, the DMCA takedown notice is successfully challenged, it is left up to the user to repost the image on their own. All attached comments are permanently gone, along with the view count, and anyone linking to that particular photo is left with a useless dead link.

Now, according to the terms of the DMCA, the service provider is supposed to replace the content it removed. Flickr is obviously not interested in doing that. It's not as if Flickr doesn't have the technology. Gorman pointed out on Twitter that Flickr has restored deleted accounts in the past, which means that a permanent backup of Gorman's entire page probably still resides on its servers. It even repaired external links for the user. But for some reason, Flickr is simply unwilling to fix this for Gorman or change how it handles foreign accounts.

Flickr did not respond to Gorman's emails. Yahoo!, which owns Flickr, did, but its "answers" were completely useless.

I have to communicate with flickr and Yahoo! separately. Flickr have yet to reply to a single email about it. Yahoo do reply. Eventually. It takes them 5 days. And then it's the kind of reply that doesn't actually reply to anything. Imagine typing a reply to someone who's asked 4 questions, knowing that you've not attempted to address 3 of them, and still ending it with the words, "we trust this answers your concerns"? It doesn't. And they know it doesn't. That's Yahoo.

Gorman did receive a phone call from Flickr's senior community manager, but found that conversation to be nearly as useless as Yahoo!'s incomplete answers:

When I asked Zack if he could tell me why the rules were different for non-US based customers he said that he couldn't tell me. I asked if he knew and couldn't tell me because he wasn't allowed to or if he couldn't tell me because he simply didn't know. He replied that he couldn't tell me that either. When I asked if he thought they could replace the photo he said he didn't know. I told him that I knew they had managed to replace a whole account that had been deleted recently, and he told me that replacing an account was not the same as replacing a page. I asked him why he thought they didn't have to comply with the terms of the DMCA and replace the photo and he told me he wasn't able to answer questions like that.

I don't believe Zack's employers are giving him the tools required to do his job.
"If it's possible to replace the photo, will you do so?"
"Ack... I ... um... that's tricky... I can't say yes to that."
"But the only reason you wouldn't say yes to that, is if you can imagine a situation in which you discover it is possible but still don't do it?"
"Yes."
"And can you imagine that happening? Can you imagine one of your engineers saying that he can replace the photo... and you deciding not to do it?"
"Well... no."
"So promise me that if it's possible to replace it, you will replace it."
"I don't think I can do that."

Following this disheartening phone call came Flickr's official response to Gorman's situation, and it appears that the photo service is not going to deal with this at all.

"After reviewing your recent correspondence, we have no further comments to make regarding this case, and consider it closed."

That's no way to run a social service on the internet. Your users are from all over the world, and while it is extremely difficult to play by the hydra-esque rules of a multitude of rightsholders, there are a million better ways to service the needs of your customers—and Gorman is indeed a paying customer with a Pro account. If the comment thread on Gorman's picture is any indication, Flickr is going to start leaking users simply because it refuses to budge an inch on its so-called DMCA response policy.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, takedown
Companies: flickr, yahoo

A Look At Three Popular Sites That May Be In Trouble Under SOPA

from the collateral-damage dept

The EFF is taking a look at some websites that may face serious legal questions and liability should SOPA become law, specifically looking at Etsy, Flickr and Vimeo. These are three extremely popular and useful sites, which most people certainly believe are and should be perfectly legal. But under SOPA, they could be declared "dedicated to theft of US property," thanks to the broad definitions under the law. Take Etsy, for example:

Etsy is an online marketplace for handmade goods, where users can set up a storefront and create listings for things they�ve made.  There are over 800,000 active �shops� filled with these handmade goods � far too many for Etsy to monitor manually. Further, because of the eclectic nature of goods listed, it�s difficult to technically filter through the objects listed.

All that means that it�s not feasible for Etsy to proactively prevent listings that may be perceived to violate US copyright or trademark law.  That�s a problem, because  under SOPA, anybody who is a �holder of an intellectual property right harmed by the activities� of even a portion of the site, could serve Etsy�s payment processors with a notice that would require them to suspend Etsy�s service within 5 days. That means that a trademark violation in one of the storefronts could lead to payment suspension across the entire site. Unlike DMCA notices, which should be targeted to specific infringements, payment provider suspensions will likely target entire accounts.  And even if Etsy protests, the bill's vigilante provisions, which grant them immunity for choking off a site if they have a "reasonable" belief that a portion of a site enable infringement, give the payment processors a strong incentive to cut them off anyway.

The SOPA defenders in our comments will insist that Etsy should have picked a business model that doesn't rely on infringement. Kinda shows the disconnect here, doesn't it? Etsy's business model has nothing to do with infringement... and that's the problem with SOPA.

Flickr, of course, is one of the most popular photo hosting sites. But under SOPA, it's at risk:

Like Etsy, Flickr takes copyright issues seriously, and complies with DMCA safe harbor requirements by taking down photos when it gets a valid complaint, establishing a repeat infringer policy, etc.. But it doesn�t proactively monitor its user-generated content for copyright infringement. The language of SOPA is vague enough that an individual or corporate rightsholder could claim this lack of monitoring as �taking � deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the � site to carry out acts that constitute a violation.� Flickr uses an ad network to place advertisements, and accepts payments for premium accounts. Both of those revenue streams could be suspended in a matter of days by a single complaint, and the process of reactivating them could be long and complex.

Vimeo is a really interesting one, since that company was sued by EMI for "inducing" infringement by having popularized "lipdub" videos. As EFF points out, that's more than enough to have them completely shut down under SOPA.

Of course, it's unlikely that rightsholders will go after any of these sites now under SOPA. They're all big enough -- and can afford lawyers. But there's a real fear that the next generation of such sites will get shut down... or, worse, won't even start up at all, due to the massive potential liability.

Filed Under: liability, risks, sopa
Companies: etsy, flickr, vimeo

Flickr Using Questionable Excuse To Take Down Photos From Egypt

from the unfortunate dept

On Friday, after Clay Shirky's excellent talk about social media and the Middle East at SXSW, someone in the audience pointed out how some photos from Egypt of secret service agents had been removed from Flickr. Shirky later tweeted a link to coverage of the takedown letter, which mentions vague terms of service violations. Yahoo later came out and claimed the images were taken down because they weren't taken by the uploader. Of course, as some have pointed out, that's a bogus excuse, since plenty of people -- including Flickr's top employees -- regularly post images that they did not create. And, of course, in true Streisand Effect fashion, all this has really done is call that much more attention to the images and information that was taken down.

Filed Under: egypt, photos, takedowns
Companies: flickr, yahoo

Blaming The Flickr API For Copyright Infringement?

from the APIs-don't-infringe-copyright,-people-do dept

The Fourth of July is over, but for some Flickr users the holiday's revolutionary spirit is still running strong. Apparently over the weekend a company called MyxerTones made Flickr's entire photographic catalog available for sale as cellphone wallpaper -- regardless of the license selected by each photo's owner.

For Jim Goldstein, a photographer affected by the violation, this was the last straw. He's posted a lengthy discussion of the issue in which he details other instances where his Flickr photos have been used without permission. Goldstein lays the blame at Flickr's feet, saying that their API and RSS systems suffer from "security holes" and don't properly protect users' copyrights. His post has attracted over 100 comments and nearly as many inbound links.

So what's the problem, exactly? In an early email to Flickr, Goldstein put it this way:

I want to be clear RSS feeds are not a problem for people to receive updates to view photos either in their RSS reader or through a web browser on their computer [...] Personally I like that Flickr provides tags as a means of searching and organizing. I have no problem with using this functionality for all uses other than the unauthorized publication of my work.

In other words, use of his work by RSS is fine, except when it isn't. How is Flickr supposed to know the difference? Well, it just is. And not by requiring Goldstein to mark his photos "friends only," mind you -- Goldstein doesn't want to lose the promotional value of Flickr's tag searches and RSS feeds. Flickr should know, somehow, that he doesn't mind users viewing his photos in their RSS readers, but does mind when they view them, via RSS, on Mac Mini connected to a TV that uses FlickrFan. Photos should be public, but not, you know, really public.

Needless to say, this is incoherent. If your work can be viewed on a computer it can also be copied -- and, in fact, already has been. And, if the copier so desires, they can then reuse it. It's sweet of Flickr to implement tricks like their one pixel overlays, but only a fool would think they stop any but the laziest and most insignificant pirates.

Does Flickr's API make unauthorized use of copyrighted material easier? Sure. But it doesn't fundamentally change any of the operations that can be performed on photos through the website -- it just simplifies a bit of the rigamarole associated with automating the process. In this respect it serves as a device that abets infringement. But that can't reasonably be considered a flaw or mistake, for reasons we should all be familiar with by now.

The Flickr API can be used to violate photograph owners' rights. But the fault lies with those who misuse the tool, not with the tool itself. Goldstein doesn't seem content with going after infringers, and I suppose that's understandable -- it's a neverending battle, and an unsatisfying one. But what he's asking from Flickr is both wrongheaded and technically impossible. He, and copyright owners everywhere, can choose to adapt to the rules of the digital age or to retreat from them entirely -- but rewriting them is not an option.

Filed Under: blame, copyright, flickr api
Companies: flickr, yahoo