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Flickr has adopted a less severe way of handling copyright infringement claims after a small firestorm of controversy erupted about a photograph of President Barack Obama modified to look like The Dark Knight's rendition of the Joker comic-book villain.
Previously, certain copyright infringement complaints were met with the removal of an image, and if the complaint was overruled, the Flickr member who posted the image was allowed to repost it. After the Joker Obama case, Flickr decided to merely replace the image in question with a message, a move that means the discussion below the image is preserved and that eases republication if the removal is overturned.
The Obama Joker image still is widespread on Flickr.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)The move illustrates the complexities that have arisen in the digital era where photos can be transferred and modified with ease. Copyright law is a much older concept than the Internet, though it's been renovated a bit relatively recently with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Under the DMCA, a party holding copyright to a photo or other work can request that a Web site remove content posted by a third party that infringes that copyright; the Web site can avoid liability in the matter if it takes down the work in question when it receives the notice of infringement. The DMCA also includes a provision to let the third party that published the content challenge the claim.
The Joker Obama image was swept up in this DMCA process in August. The resulting discussion led the Yahoo photo-sharing site to change its policy Tuesday:
"Upon receipt of a complete NOI (notice of infringement), the U.S. Copyright Team will replace the image with a new static image that bears the following copy: 'This image has been removed due to a claim of copyright infringement,'" said Heather Champ, Flickr's director of community, in a comment.
The change was the suggestion of a Flickr user, The Searcher, and Flickr said it liked the idea.
The Obama Joker image was posted on the Flickr site of Firas Alkhateeb, who told the Los Angeles Times he created the Obama Joker image using Photoshop and a Time Magazine cover photograph. The Obama Joker image spread farther after somebody else created a poster with the image and the word "socialism."
Flickr, though, removed the image after it received a DMCA notice of infringement, Champ said in a forum posting.
Among those to criticize the move were Thomas Hawk, an outspoken critic of what he sees as Flickr censorship and the chief executive of Flickr rival Zooomr. He argued in a blog post that the image qualified as a parody under the fair-use provision of copyright law that permits some uses of copyright material.
"Whatever you may or may not think about this image and its appropriateness, the image would absolutely and unequivocally be considered parody and parody has always been one of the most effective defenses against any copyright complaint," Hawk wrote.
Added TechCrunch's Mike Arrington, "In the past Flickr has deleted accounts of users who are critical of President Obama, but as far as I know nothing like this was done to users who were critical of Bush. It's clear that the Flickr team wanted to take this image down."
However, image copying and modification permissions can vary according to context. While creating a parody from an image might be permitted under fair use, copying that parody might not be.
And there's evidence some original rights holders aren't involved. Photo District News reported that Time and DC Comics both said they hadn't send Yahoo the DMCA notice, and that the office of the original Obama photographer, Platon, wasn't even aware of the controversy.
Hawk also quoted the DMCA notice Flickr sent Alkhateeb letter that identified the infringement complainant to be Edward Przydzia.
Yahoo hasn't detailed its rationale for removing the image, saying its privacy policy forbids it from discussing particulars of the situation. However, it did indicate politics were not involved.
"There appears to be a whole lot of makey uppey going in the news and blogosphere about this event," Champ said in a forum post. "We very much value freedom of speech and creativity...I'm not sure how complying with the law has led to the idea that we (the Flickr team) have a particular political agenda."
Too cheap for a Flickr pro membership and scared of Zooomr? Check out TinyAlbum, a super simple and minimalist photo-hosting service that will let you upload as many photos as you want (at up to 8MB a file) into slick little albums.
The UI shares a lot in common with Flickr, and incorporates a handful of really user-friendly features like drag-and-drop reordering, on the fly rotation, and links to various sizes for download. It's missing an open API, something that makes Flickr so incredibly useful in conjunction with third-party services, but the speed and ease of use are top notch for a small, independent app.
I managed to put together three albums with full-resolution shots in just a few minutes. The service is missing something similar to Flickr's explore page, but you can discover new content uploaded by other users in both a stream on the front page, as well as a Digg-spy-like service that shows you the most recently active users as well as what tags they've affixed to their shots.
See also: Photie serves up unlimited storage for your photos
Flickr users will find TinyAlbums familiar; however the service's speed is far peppier than the photo-hosting giant (click to enlarge).
(Credit: CNET Networks)
I have received requests for an inclusive index of all 300 of the Webware 100 finalists. So if you're looking for a particular product in the Webware 100, check out this alphabetical list of all of them. Click through to the product's category page to read more about it and cast a vote.
As of this writing, we've recorded more than 840,000 unique Webware 100 product votes. That's already more than we got last year! We think this highlights how important Web-based apps are becoming to mainstream technology users--the audience that CNET aims to serve with this site, as we currently do with Download.com and CNET.com itself.
Click through to the permalink page for the list...
... Read more
GoSee4Me is a new service hoping to help give people with cameras and too much time on their hands a spare buck or two. Similar to some of the question and answer services out there, GoSee4Me is a network for people to get pictures from all over the globe by utilizing a pay-per-picture system generated by users who can "claim" shots like they would an assignment. This isn't aimed at the folks who would be content just looking for something by tags or description in Flickr, Zooomr, or other photo-sharing sites. Instead it's aimed at unearthing very specific locales, or very detailed parts of a city or building.
This has a variety of uses, mostly for people who simply can't get to a certain location to give it the once-over. For instance, say you want to see the inside of a hotel, or the neighborhood around it in another country. If GoSee4Me has someone in that area who's willing to take on the job, you could get a fairly unbiased view of how it looks prior to booking reservations there and hopefully at a low price. As a photographer, you also might be getting an excuse to get out and take some shots or see something new.
Frankly I don't see this site working on the travel angle alone, as most established hotels and restaurants have reviews and a decent amount of pictures lined up for users to find without too much trouble. For people who are moving to a new city however, it would be nice to be able to hire someone out to take some shots of a place you're thinking about moving into, as Craigslist and real estate photos often times hide the important details.
Also, for hotels or other city buildings, there's a separate service called EveryScape, which we took a look at last week. The site offers 3D views of some interior locations, but there's no paid-for option to have people do some gopher work for you.
.Mac, the popular Web services suite from Apple is getting an update this morning. Among the newer features is a much-needed upgrade to .Mac's Web photo gallery service, which now ties in with the freshly updated iPhoto '08 and the iPhone. Users will also be able to upload photos to their online galleries via a specialized e-mail address. The new iPhone integration mirrors some of the options that are already in place to shuttle off photos from the device, with a new option to "send to Web gallery," which lets you send photos to their.Mac Web gallery, and their friends who have allowed the option in their own Web galleries.
Also of note, the updated Web galleries will work with movies made with iMovie '08. There's also a new option right in iMovie '08 to send the video straight to YouTube.
We're not seeing anything revolutionary here that hasn't been done on other services such as Flickr and Zooomr, but it does look pretty slick. The one big catch is that you have to be a .Mac subscriber to take advantage of these galleries. This is a nice plus if you use the service, but it's hardly a competitor to other photo services that are open to everyone. The one real surprise from this morning is the storage bump from 1GB to 10GB, which is necessary when you're splitting that space between e-mail, photos, and videos.
Update: To take a look at a Web gallery yourself, Apple has posted an example here. Keep in mind it might be a little slow today, since a lot of people are hitting the page at the same time.
(Credit:
Apple.com)
I eatd mini cheezburger at the TechCrunch party at August Capital on Friday, as LOLCats would say. There were other morsels there too, some tastier than others.
Remember before the Internet came along, when you could call a 900 telephone number to talk to "Santa Claus?" Dial Directions feels nostalgic like that. Being directionally challenged, I consider it a gift. You literally dial "DIRECTIONS" on your cell phone and get a turn-by-turn text message. The service is available in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles during beta testing. It did a pretty good job recognizing the street names I mumbled.
We're all specks in the cosmos, but if you fear adding your autobiography to Wikipedia because someone might delete your insignificant self, then hail WikiYou to the rescue. It's got the grand plan of profiling everyone on the planet, starting with a stable of celebrities. There are ten pages worth of profiles for Jennifers so far. I don't think I want my sordid past up there next to Lindsay Lohan's, but anybody could post an unauthorized biography of me, or you, or your mother, because WikiYou's whole point seems to be to give the finger to services that only favor "reliable sources." And you thought growing up with Google was bad for your reputation? Am I missing something?
Erica has already covered Jaman, but I just want to chime in. I've always wished for easier access to foreign movies, although Facets was an incredible resource while growing up. Cable services charge too much for TV stations from abroad. Jaman serves up crisp, high-definition films from around the world in their full, crisp glory. You can rate films and upload your own either as a Flash file that anyone can play in a browser, or as an encrypted H.264 file. Fun.
Migratr's supported photo services
(Credit: Migratr)There are already a lot of useful plug-ins for downloading or uploading from online sites such as Flickr, Picasa Web, Snapfish, Webshots (disclaimer: owned by CNET Networks), and the rest, but most applications only work with one specific service.
If you want to move all of your images from one site to another (if you're one of those unhappy Flickr users, for example), and you're not looking forward to manually downloading and uploading hundreds of pictures, Migratr might be able to help. A home-brewed tool from independent developer Alexander Lucas, Migratr automatically downloads all of your photos from one site, and uploads them to the other.
It sounds great, so what's the catch? Well, Migratr only currently includes support for Flickr, Picasa Web, 23HQ, SmugMug, and Zooomr (which shouldn't even be counted because it has temporarily disabled bulk uploaders). However, downloading and uploading among the four available online photo services worked wonderfully for me. I must admit, however, that I was transferring tens of files, not thousands. ... Read more
SlideShare, which lets you share PowerPoint presentations with the world, today added the capability to match audio tracks to slide shows. This is a cool feature that podcasters could exploit to show and tell a story at the same time. Professors, marketers, and other storytellers might give this free tool a whirl to provide remote access to their work instead of using software such as Adobe Captivate or TechSmith Camtasia. You could even use Slideshare to narrate a PowerPoint-based photo gallery of your vacation. Come to think of it, why don't more photo-sharing sites follow Zooomr's lead (more here) by letting you add narration to pictures?
SlideShare makes embedding a file from PowerPoint or Keynote into any blog or Web page cut-and-paste painless. The site attracted more than 3 million unique visits last month, with slides in more than 11 languages. Who knew cruising through PowerPoint files could be fun? You can find slide shows on nearly any subject; popular topic tags include "Web 2.0" and "humor." The site's social networking lets you interact alone or in groups, tagging and commenting on each others' presentations. SlideShare will add privacy options later.
To use the new feature, just upload a PowerPoint to Slideshare, then upload an MP3 file to the Internet Archive or elsewhere. Next, Slideshare's Create Slidecast feature will sync the sound with the slides. You can match chunks of a speech or song to precise slides, or create a freeflowing soundtrack instead.
If you're trying to mimic some experimental Andy Warhol film, you could create a dizzying effect by embedding a bunch of slideshows onto one Web page and then playing them all at once. More practical, however, are SlideShare's Facebook app and its API for developers. Check out this open-source slidecasting sample below (more examples here). If the audio doesn't play, you might be an early bird, so try again a bit later this morning:
On our weekly Real Deal podcast today, Tom and I covered online photo sharing. It's not so much a comparison of the dozens of good photo sites we know of, but rather an overview of the issues for people confused about the whole space. Topics covered: Various services. How to pick a site. Privacy and copyrights. Online editing. And listener questions.
How to select a photo site, and why.
See also our Newbie's Guide to Flickr.
If you want to join the ongoing discussion, come on over to the Real Deal forums.
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Real Deal subscription links:
- For RSS readers: http://www.cnet.com/i/pod/realdeal.xml
- iTunes: Subscribe
Photo-sharing site Zooomr is mostly relaunched in its version 3 incarnation, and now the two-person company has begun offering $19.95 "pro" account subscriptions in hopes of raising money.
Zooomr wants users to buy new pro accounts.
(Credit: Zooomr)"We do need to make at least a little money to survive," Chief Executive Thomas Hawk said in a blog posting Monday. "The community has stepped up and helped us in the most generous of ways, and we are hoping that all of you who find Zooomr meaningful will also consider helping us out by turning pro."
Those with pro accounts won't see ads when the company starts showing them "some time in the near future to help pay the bills." Pro account holders also will get access to analysis tools and other features not available to those with free accounts, he added.
Zooomr's chief competitor, Yahoo's photo-sharing behemoth Flickr, costs $24.95 per year.
