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Photographers Angered By Flickr Wall Art Profits

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Not everyone is happy with Flickr’s latest use of users’ images: The photo sharing website has recently begun selling physical prints of pictures uploaded to the site, without compensating the original creators and, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, some users are less than pleased about it.

In October, Flickr introduced its Flickr Wall Art product, which allows users to turn their photos into mounted prints designed to be hung on a wall. These sell at prices starting from $49 for a wooden mount or $29 for a gallery canvas wrap.

Last week Flickr expanded the service, allowing anyone to choose from a library of over 50 million freely-licensed Creative Commons images uploaded by users - and these images are sold with all profits going to Yahoo Inc., owner of Flickr, without any compensation to the original artists.

Flickr has the legal right to sell the images

Flickr is able to do this because of the way some of its users choose to license their images. By default, the licensing mode for photo uploads is set to “All Rights Reserved”, denying any use of the images by third parties for any purpose.

Flickr offers prints for use as wall art

But many photographers prefer to share their pictures, allowing others to copy and use them free of charge. This is done by selecting one of the Creative Commons licenses from a drop- down list on the site. These licenses come in different variants which allow or prohibit certain defined types of use.

The most accommodating option, “Attribution” (CC BY), allows anyone to do pretty much whatever they like with the image, provided no laws are broken and the original author is credited.

Progressively more restrictive licensing modes are also available: If the owner wants to prevent the creation of derivative works, they can select “Attribution-NoDerivs” (CC BY-ND) and by using “Attribution-ShareAlike” (CC BY-SA), they can force others to share anything  created from the original image under the same license.

Crucially, all of these licenses explicitly allow the commercial exploitation of the original work by anyone, including Flickr, and it’s only images stored under these licenses which Flickr is now making widely available for purchase as wall art. Flickr is therefore adhering to the terms of the Creative Commons licenses as specified by its users. No such usage rights are given to Flickr until the user deliberately selects one of the Creative Commons options which allows the company to sell the images.

Users caught out

Unfortunately, some photographers have found themselves caught by surprise by Flickr’s offering of Creative Commons images. Some have stored their work on Flickr under one of the above licenses, sometimes for many years, and are unhappy to find their images are now being sold for someone else’s profit.

Flickr user Liz West told the Wall Street Journal, “It ticked me off that somebody else is selling them when I was giving them away”.

Others are happy to allow commercial organisations to use their images, but feel that selling them as individual framed prints is a step too far.

In the same article, Photographer Nelson Lourenço stated “[Yahoo] Selling my work and getting the full money out of it came as a surprise”.

How to avoid the commercial exploitation of your pictures

Users who wish to allow sharing of their work, but without allowing others to sell it for profit, should license their images under one of the “NonCommercial” Creative Commons options: CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA or CC BY-NC-ND, which are equivalent to the licenses above but prohibiting any commercial use. Flickr would therefore not be able to sell these images for Flickr Wall Art without explicit permission. If you’re at all worried about what might be done with your images, set them back to “All rights reserved” and let interested parties contact you directly for permission.

Flickr Wall Art also includes curated collections from selected photographers who are paid 51% of the net sales from their work. Inclusion is currently offered on an invitation-only basis.

For more information on how the service works and how to control the way your images are used, check out Flickr’s latest blog post on the subject.