Oh, this just gets better and better. Or perhaps sadder and sadder.
In a post earlier this morning we discussed Flickr’s questionable decision to remove a photoshopped image of President Obama that makes him look like the Heath Ledger (Joker) character from The Dark Knight. In that post we quoted Flickr’s director of community Heather Champ who said “We very much value freedom of speech and creativity” in an explanation about why the image was removed from Flickr. We called B.S.
Now Flickr has shut off further comments on that forum post, which was most definitely not headed in a pro-Flickr direction. In his message shutting off the discussion, Zack Sheppard reiterates how important political discussion is to Flickr:
Political discussions and expression are definitely allowed here on Flickr. We don’t want to squelch political discussion, but if something is in violation of the Community Guidelines or copyright law and it’s reported, it will be taken down whether it’s a kitten, a sunset, or something political.
It looks like this thread has devolved into antics and gone off the rails so I’m shutting it down. The OPs question has been answered here. This image was removed because the Yahoo! Copyright Team received a complete Notice of Infringement.
This is fantastically absurd. Yahoo is quite literally trumpeting that they support political discussion in the very message they are sending to close down a political discussion.
Can you not even entertain the possibility that the yahoo lawyers did actually receive a copyright claim?
sure. i absolutely assume they did.
So what exactly is the problem? They received request to remove the material, they removed the material. What am I missing?
its all in the other post.
Mr. Arrington, when you say in your other post that you “don’t think there is a lawyer in America who would argue that Alkhateeb isn’t perfectly within his rights to create and distribute this image under fair use and parody defenses” you’re correct, but also missing the potentially bigger issue… the copyright claim/DMCA notice could have come from an artist who was the creator of the original piece and Alkhateeb simply stole it (or modified it) and posted it.
If Alkhateeb did infringed someone else’s work and posted the image, I can’t imagine you would want him taking credit for or infringe upon for the original creator’s work, would you?
You don’t know who the DMCA claim was from (its likely bs), but its also possible that an artist was being damaged by the post and complained about it. Either way, pulling it down while investigating was probably warranted.
The post here from Silicon Bear shows complete cluelessness on the topics of fair use and parody.
@Shii: Your post shows complete cluelessness on the topic of reading comprehension. His comment doesn’t need clarification, but here it is for you anyways:
Silicon Bear is saying that Flickr may have received a DMCA claim from the original artist of the parody (as in, the user didn’t create the parody, but merely posted it Flickr, stolen from someone else).
Michael, you’re shooting the messenger.
If there was a DMCA takedown – and there’s a a big IF here – not complying with it would be going against the law and making Yahoo liable for the copyright infringement. And this would be just plain stupid.
DMCA is indeed a growing risk in this country and should be re-discussed given the pace that new media is growing and the ever-changing relationship between content and users. But for the time being that’s what we have, and asking anyone to break the law just for the sake of going against it is just irresponsible.
they censored they discussion too. they give the US government email conversations.
Or you can just post at http://f2bbs.com where they have the joker as an icon lol
It’s PARODY.
Receiving a note from a lawyer should not equal instant removal. Then it’s just a matter of whether parody offends somebody who can afford a lawyer (which pretty much means anyone worth mocking).
http://www.publ...com/parody.html
If Yahoo wants to remove the image, my suggestion is to upload it everywhere on Flickr. Let them sort it out themselves.
http://www.flic...in/photostream/
Too bad nobody has the cahones to test these lawyers. I would have like to see this go to court just to see what the judge would say.
I think what you guys are getting is its the freedom of expression. We are supposed to be living in a country that respects that and encourage that and grasp it. That was one of the ideas that our country was founded on. That way we didn’t only hear the kings propaganda and lead the masses to believe one side of the story. Pics like that guy did was like a political cartoon, and he was expressing his view, its art. I want to know though how the DMCA is seeing this as harmful or infringement. I doubt who ever created that made a movie staring Obama as the joker and John McCain as batman. He didn’t make any money from it and didn’t harm anyone. In another way I can see yahoo’s view too it is there site and they should be able to do whatever they want with it, but its also a site that is made to let people post pics they are being counter productive and completely missing the point of their own site which again is expression. Yahoo if you don’t want people to freely express them selves then close your site because you are just limiting the potential of what it can be. Since when has the dollar been worth more than the freedom of speech and expression. It scares me because there is no check and balances in situations like this.
I smell poop too; but if they did receive a copyright claim shouldn’t they take it down? Or should they leave it up? Or just leave the discussion up and remove the image? What’s the right course of action?
Parody = Fair Use = Invalid infringement claim prima facie. Yahoo knows the request for removal was invalid. Their action reflects cowardice and politically motivated censorship and nothing else.
question the legitimacy of the TC gapinghole print = censorship
Why does this not surprise me in the least?
Exactly – the threat of a lawyer and the entire Constitution goes out the window!
Well at least TC hasn’t shut down this lively political discussion – interesting reading – political conversations always turn into bashing sessions – always.
I think I get what you’re saying, but I don’t think the Constitution applies to what actions a private company take on their own website.
I think Yahoo’s handling of the situation is rife with hypocrisy. However, as you state, the first amendment doesn’t apply to a private company. They certainly are free to do as they wish with their own property.
The constitution doesn’t apply in a “artist versus Yahoo!” controversy. Agreed.
However, the constitution is absolutely relevant where a private company with a sizable legal department (Yahoo!) claims that it’s effectively forced to do something it finds otherwise objectionable (take down the image in question) because someone has threatened them with legal action. Yahoo! is asking people to view the company as a friend of artists and freedom, and assigning the blame for the takedown on the evil unidentified entity that made the copyright/DMCA claim.
Many people are considering Yahoo!’s contention that they have no meaningful choice here – that law and simple good sense virtually compel them to do something they’d rather not do. In considering that claim, it’s helpful to think about the defenses that Yahoo! might raise in court if it failed to take the requested action, and was sued by the entity that’s threatening legal action.
One of those defenses that Yahoo! might raise might involve freedom of expression – and unreasonable restriction freedom of expression is one of constraints on what a court can be asked to do by any litigant. Other defenses might include the DMCA’s procedural rules, and 17 USC 107’s definition of fair use.
So when we ask ourselves, “How did my view of Yahoo!’s corporate culture and values change as a result of their actions in this case?”, it’s certainly relevant to consider whether or not they might have perfectly good defenses to the hypothetical lawsuit that’s supposedly forcing them to do something they find abhorrent. If those perfectly good defenses sound like they’re pretty strong, and the case against Yahoo! sounds like it’s pretty weak, well, then perhaps Yahoo! isn’t an innocent victim of cruel circumstances beyond their control after all. Perhaps the alleged DMCA complaint is providing Yahoo! with an excuse to do something that would otherwise subject them to criticism because they’re taking advantage of their market position to make it more difficult for some people to express themselves.
Again, that doesn’t mean that the people whose communications were burdened or restricted have a cause of action against Yahoo! based on the first amendment – it just means that the rest of us might choose to look at Yahoo! like they’re partisan hacks, not friendly computer geeks eager to help us share pictures and ideas.
anti-bush stuff = good
anti-obama = bad
O trust me. The flack that Obama is getting is bigger than Bush. No one dressed up as the joker when Bush was in office. There was no movie called “Bush Deception”.
There was barely any “loud” opposition towards the Patriot Act. Obama’s healthcare plan got a shit storm of opposition. People complain more about a healthcare plan than the Iraq war.
I like to call this the “Twitter Age” because nowadays people hate more. People hate Fred. People hate Jonas Brothers. People hate Obama. People hate Twilight. People hate Twitter.
The n-word is very popular nowadays.
+ 1
+1
+100
@jean-michel you must show us the heads of the 99 people you killed to get their bits.
I shall have them lined up in front of the TC offices shortly; they dared displease the Obama cartel.
(Can someone explain the engineering rationale behind limiting thread depth to 4?)
“Death of a President” Bush Assassination Movie
http://bit.ly/ImWun
for starters, S.
Not only are you off topic, but you aren’t even informed about your off topic.
Bush was harassed 24×7. It was practically an industry for MSNBC. The worst part is there are private citizens posting and blogging about Obama and Bush. But in Bush’s case 90% of the media treated him like a joke while they bow at the alter of Obama.
This is the scary part on how journalism, who’s underpinnings are supposed to be about honesty and skeptism, instead have become ’state run media’ for the president they helped get elected and who’s ‘too big to fail.’
‘too big to fail’ LOL. The stereotype of blacks being ‘big’ is too much to resist here.
‘ too big to fail’ indeed……LOL
You’re kidding me right? Don’t remember the clown image in vanity fair? Or the million of political cartoons making fun of Bush. Tell me, does David Letterman have a segment on his show that every night gives a stupid quote by Obama? No politician has been joked or ridiculed more than Bush, with a possible exception of Ford. On the flipside no politician has been as worshiped as Obama, with a possible exception of Washington. No wait, they didn’t make Washington shoes, dinner plates, table clothes, or towels did they?
As someone who dislikes Bush as much more than Obama, you have to admit, Obama’s ass is kissed like he is Jesus, and Bush has always been treated as what he was, an idiot.
Nice try buddy, but try using Google before you make any claims.
http://www.vani...h-as-joker.html
“No one dressed as the Joker when Bush was in office”?
Fail for you.
And no DMCA notice. Surprised? I’m not.
+1
That is laughable. The Liberal Elite think they are being overly criticized because they really dislike the unwashed peasant masses daring to argue with them. It’s insulting for a Harvard educated liberal to have to even talk to, much less argue, with a silly uneducated simpleton.
So it isn’t that they are receiving more criticism than Bush. It’s that they simply can’t believe that America isn’t just accepting their ideas. I mean..how dare America question our Liberal Elite Leadership!?
You hit the nail square on the head with your comment! Thanks-
Your right-wing masters would like me to remind that although you used the word “liberal” as a derogatory word 3 times in your post, you failed to include “socialism” at least as many times.
Please try to do better in the future.
Is that what your left-wing masters want us to believe?
Ah yes, I forgot, Obama won the popular vote and the electorate because he was taking a s*** on the unwashed masses and laughing it up with ivory tower elitists. How stupid of me to have forgotten that.
The vocally loud minority of people who scream that Obama equal socialist Hitler over serious healthcare reform because they ditto fat cat Limbaugh and Friends instead of thinking for themselves, are they the so-called “unwashed peasant masses”?
I mean, let’s be serious. At least liberals waited until Bush proved that he could enact his fascist fantasies before making comparisons to Hitler’s rise to power. If I recall correctly, Fox News was playing the Star Wars Imperial March theme during their broadcast of the inauguration. And no one in touch with reality can claim that Obama hasn’t had to deal with more venomous hatred from the Right from Day One than Bush ever had to deal with his entire presidency.
Please post a link to your ‘imperial march theme claim.’ Otherwise STFU as that is complete bull unless it was on a poltical talk show and not the ‘news.’ The garbage you hear out of the ‘news’ sections on MSNBC put anything fox political analysts look meak
“It’s insulting for a Harvard educated liberal to have to even talk to, much less argue, with a silly uneducated simpleton. ”
Most of the time the silly uneducated simpletons are yelling and parroting disinformation that they’ve heard from Fox news. It’s hard to argue let alone talk to that kind of person.
Right, because throwing down “Fox News” is the hallmark of a well-reasoned argument. Don’t like someone’s viewpoint? Just say they watch Fox News. Intellect at it’s best.
And yes, I use the term “liberal” as a derogatory term.
And I stand by my opinion that our Liberal Elite doesn’t like to be questioned by common people. They are all about promising things to them during the election, all about kissing babies and the like. But to be questioned by them? No. That is not possible. The Liberal Elite know what is good for us and it’s our job to just accept their better rearing and education.
@Whatever (stupid thread depth thing)
“The Liberal Elite know what is good for us and it’s our job to just accept their better rearing and education.”
LOL! Do you have amnesia? Do you REMEMBER what it was like in the Bush presidency? They were champions of the “we know what’s best, so don’t both questioning us” attitude.
http://www.econ...ory_id=14258768
Vanity Fair article from 2008
http://www.vani...h-as-joker.html
Fahrenheit 911 ring a bell?
This is nothing new. Both sides do it. It’s all in your perspective
Yeah, just replace all instances of conservative/liberal/democrat/republican with “politician” and suddenly we’re all on the SAME side
+1000
Have you been in a cave for the past 9 years?
bla bla bla. Losing side always has to have an excuse. Obama is now on the losing side. When he was on the winning side, not even Jesus could have done better than Obama — remember that?
Now go ahead and censor me.
@ S “The flack that Obama is getting is bigger than Bush. No one dressed up as the joker when Bush was in office.”
Um, but they did make a professional TV commercial comparing Bush to Hitler and paid to have it aired on TV as well as publicized it on the Internet. Bush haters/Obama fanboys have a very selective memory conveniently forgetting all the crap they did – everyday – for the 8 years prior to Obama.
No f’ing way is Obama getting more flack. I reject your revisionism.
FYI: I did not vote for Bush either time, nor McCain, so don’t assume I am a Republican.
Really? How old are you? Were you alive and politically cognizant during Bush’s tenure as POTUS? Obama hasn’t received even an iota of the flack the left gave Bush, but then again, it’s only been a year.
P.S. I didn’t vote for Bush, Obama, McCain, nor Paul.
Recycled bottle where have you been. If you don’t remember there was people sending constitutions to Bush. You don’t remember the posters of bush with a hitler mustache. People didn’t throw a big fit over that. As far as obama goes. I don’t care what color he is. Hell I would have voted for alan keys if he ran. Its not the n word that I would use to describe obama its the c word and thats corrupt. The coorperations run the show now and this proves it.
“The flack that Obama is getting is bigger than Bush. No one dressed up as the joker when Bush was in office. There was no movie called “Bush Deception”.”
I am the person who started the now closed thread about the censorship of ‘Joker Obama’ in the Flickr help forum.
I spent five minutes searching Flickr and found many ‘Joker Bush’ images. Also many images of Bush being insulted and in some cases killed in various not-very-clever ways. These were the links on my post that were deleted by the Flickr staff.
As far as movies about Bush, I suggest you Google “Micheal Moore’.
And as others have noticed there was a movie cheerfully depicting an assination of President Bush.
You illustrate the profound ignorance of this nation’s citizenry re. free speech; it is not without limit. Educate yourself, then wax indignant if you wish, but speak with some modicum of mastery of your subject to avoid revealing yourself to be just another loon.
Yahoo is a joke.
After their intense collaboration with the Chinese government to spy on citizen, I would not be surprised to learn they’re doing the same here in the USA passing along Yahoo email user’s conversations.
Is the US any better than Iran ?!
Yes it is better then Iran. You are still having this conversation aren’t you? And you still have your hands.
Classic, you still have your hands. So true.
free market — you can’t have it both ways.
Everyone should do what I did… re-post the picture on their own flickr account.
i vote for everyone to change their user icon to a kitten in front of a sunset, as a form of protest
Surely It won’t be long until somebody paints a clown face on Zack Sheppard himself, the idiot of the year.
Best I can do on short notice…
http://imgur.com/cCTAP.jpg
LOL you either mistook Zack Morris for Zach Sheppard in your haste, or you are an absolute, and complete genius.
I haven’t read that forum, but I’ve seen plenty of “discussion” threads lately that involve that image in one way or another. They definitely “devolved into antics” and went “off the rails”. How long should a thread be continued when it is a pointless exercise in name calling? I don’t think Flickr is under any obligation to provide a forum for that.
Your absolutely correct there. Protest is one thing, name calling as an expression of anger is totally unacceptable.
Not that they aren’t out of their right. They are just adding fuel to the fire. It’s kinda like saying, no really, we don’t censor here. And PS, this conversation is over.
It just reaffirms that it’s their playground, and we’re just renting space. I believe it was a wrong decision to close the thread, but respect that it’s their property.
Not that simple. It’s mutual exploitation: they give us storage space, and in return we increase their valuation. Without us, flickr wouldn’t worth a dime. They completely forget that part.
I’m opening a Photobucket account today & duplicate my stuff there. I’m one flickr-blunder from defection…
So don’t use their service. It’s really, really simple…
The political side that’s in the minority always play’s the squashing of dissent card. Remember the Iraq war? Remember, “you’re either with us, or against us…”
This whole crying that you aren’t allowed to express your opinion is ridiculous because you are expressing your opinion. Though maybe you’re afraid that just like Obama’s Potato Day, he’ll require Tech Crunch to remove any dissenting points of view…
There are plenty of companies that showed their bias towards Bush, and anyone who didn’t like that could take their business elsewhere. You get to speak up, and they get to run their business any way they like, but fortunately they don’t have to do what you like.
WTF is Obama Potato Day? And HTF did Iraq War & Bush get into this picture.
Does it ever occur to you that most people don’t see everything as a Republican vs. Democrat framework like you obviously do?
“Infringement”? LOL. Not even close, FLICKR. Even the most deranged legal intern at “FLICKR” would need to be on crack to classify this artist’s painting as “infringement”.
The use of brand names by artists in satirical work is absolutely legal. It’s called “FAIR USE”, and there is no question here this was legitimate fair use, because the artist’s work:
“transforms the original content or intent to create something new — whether you add, subtract, modify, or distort”
http://bit.ly/QqIo7
Some idiot at Yahoo clearly just DIDN’T LIKE the painting and just removed it.
So we’ve been through this before. It usually just ends like this:
Flickr: “So ue us!”
Victim: “I’ll take my photo hosting needs elsewhere.”
Flickr: “The fuck do we care?”
Checkmate!
forget the lawyers shutting it down. Last thing Yahoo needs is the Secret Service making inquiries.
What exactly are they inquiring about? His fonts?
They deleted my entire account citing some obscure portion of their TOS because another user reported me. There was absolutely no chance to defend myself and all the sudden my entire account was destroyed. All my blog posts went blank as well. Apparently blogging is commercial usage? I believe it was Heather with whom I spoke to about the incident and the only reply I kept getting was too bad so sad you broke the rules and you should have known better, once an account is deleted its permanent. I pointed out that the jerk who said I was violating the TOS was himself violating the TOS by posting nude pictures of some stripper in the same shared folder as his wedding pictures. Real classy Flickr. Any site that just does takedowns without even a chance to defend yourself is not worth being a part of. Had I truly broken some rule (which seems rather easy to do considering the lengthy TOS) it would have been nice to have the chance to delete the “offending” pictures instead of my entire account. There is absolutely no reason to be like this except in the most extreme of circumstances. Considering it was my account that I used professionally for blogging it would only seem logical that I was very careful about what pictures I was or was not using. But all it takes is some jerk who doesnt like something to report you and apparently with the press of a button your entire account is gone. I am lucky I had only used it for a couple of months. The most ironic part is that I was writing a blog post about how great flickr was and all the sudden I could no longer access my account.
The forum is littered with trolls who offered no help and only told me tough luck buddy. Some even told me since it was a professional blog (I guess if thats what you call it) that I should have paid for their pro account. I would have gladly done this however I was never given the chance. I know of others who have had their pro accounts deleted as well so obviously this is no solution either.
I completely agree when someone is doing something so bad or offensive that its a danger to the community but seriously this is ridiculous. Just google Flickr account deleted once.
http://www.goog...;oq=&aqi=g1
I have found Photobucket to work just as well for my purposes and have never had an issue with them. I would highly recommend transitioning now because you never know when they might suddenly delete your account.
Just to add to your points there: Photobucket removes individual images that violate TOS, instead of whole accounts without question.
Now I’m sure there’s been exceptions in the past due to abuse, but I have noticed they mostly replace TOS infringing images with a pic of their own STATING that it’s against TOS.
Flickr/Yahoo could have done the same here. Except they didn’t.
I feel your annoyance; they deleted my account once too.
Weak sauce, Yahoo!. I sincerely doubt that this qualifies as infringement (it seems to exactly meet that standards of “fair use” as I understand it). Even if you did receive a copyright claim, shouldn’t you at least *attempt* to side with your users? Or do you just crumble without any diligence?
I usually don’t both with these kinds of dust ups but I just deleted my Flickr account.
This shyte is ridonkulous
No one should give up free speach and expression for fear of a government’s reprisals. Fight.
I don’t think anyone is afraid of government reprisal. They may be afraid of a lawsuit from the owner of the original photo, TIME magazine, or from the creator of the altered image, Firas Alkhateeb, who doesn’t really like the way it’s being used in some circles. I might add that Alkhateeb’s use of the TIME photo qualifies as fair use in my book, but other persons’ uses of Alkhateeb’s image are not necessarily fair use.
It would appear from reading the first TechCrunch post on this that the photo taken down was posted by Firas Alkhateeb, in which case the complaint would have had to have come from TIME magazine, and there probably is a reasonable fair use claim. Can anyone verify this?
The cartoon is obviously racist. I applaud the efforts of media to rid the image. Racism has no place in our country.
Why was it racist?
It is YOU who is the racist.
You are the one who interprets the meaning of the disguise differently, depending on whether it is worn by a white man (http://bit.ly/AOM4a or http://bit.ly/xvXRi) or a man with some African decent (http://cache0.t.../obamajoker.jpg), who you label “Black”.
Get off it.
they did this to Bush as well. try again.
Who cares what direction the discussion was headed in? It’s open and free discussion.
Flickr + Yahoo = FAIL
Yahoo! hasn’t been relevant since 1999. Good riddance.
Heyo!
down with yahoo, yahoo has never been my fav. i just used it because my friends wouldn’t come out of their “fears” of using another service, i mean gmail is far better, and i didn’t have or didn’t want an account on yahoo because so many were using it or maybe i don’t know…but this thing does tell how immaturely they acted, were they afraid?? after that google vs vogue model thing?????/ who knows…
hey
Photobucket works GREAT!! Luv it!! Screw This freak show! Go to another website like I did.Yahoo isn’t the only website.I moved everything to Netzero! Just as good! But first,I changed my pic.to the jocker pic on my acc..moved all my files,and contacts,and didn’t delete acc.Just thought i wld let them A-holes find it and delete it for themselves.no matter,I’m already gone,not loosing a thing!
How can I easily move my stuff if it is not on my computer anymore..
Just horrible.
Sure you have the “Dead Pool”, but you really need the “Brain Dead Pool”, for sites that have traffic but whose management is so brain dead that they can’t effectively run the company.
Sites that critically thinking people would never use. Sites that are living off past glory, never innovating, whose life support is the quick cash from an aging reputation, cash that is never reinvested to revive the stinking corpse.
Sites that are doomed only to atrophy until they are husks, never dead enough to qualify for the Dead Pool, never alive enough to recommend to others.
Flickr is in the Brain Dead Pool.
funny..heres a flickr bush image:
http://www.flic...cal/2937802737/
i’m sure we’re not shocked its still up right? as long as they don’t get ‘the’ letter, all is fine.
I never understood why people get upset when a website makes a choice to remove, block, ban, or lock something that is causing a problem on a site.
Flickr has the right to do this and the reason doesn’t need to make sense. Just like you have the right to remove this post.
Why so serious?
Jokes apart, I can’t believe Flickr did this. What’s the world coming to…
oh mr. arrington, there is no better tech news shit stirring then you sir. When will you finally grow up, and realize you have a decent blog if you’d just stick to some sort of journalist standards. Is this a supermarket tabloid or a honest tech news blog?
Michael .. you’re jumping the gun here a bit. Flickr got a DMCA .. are they supposed to be judge and jury now?
That’s just crazy. If Flickr gets a DMCA they have to do a takedown (assuming the DMCA comes from a real person/institution)
Please don’t forget that the people who filed the DMCA signed a statement understanding that if they don’t own the copyright they are hugely liable.
The ball is not in Flickr’s court here, but rather in EFF or ACLU or something to file a counterclaim and make the powers that be think twice before trying to DMCA a parody.
Let’s have everyone on this thread send Flickr a DCMA notice to remove some random item, and see how many of those items get taken down.
Can someone point me to a template for a DCMA notice?
“That’s just crazy. If Flickr gets a DMCA they have to do a takedown (assuming the DMCA comes from a real person/institution)”
While the DMCA does require them to take down the materials (presuming all the conditions for a takedown notice are in effect), within 14 days the alleged infringer has to be notified and is given oppportunities for redress:
“n order to ensure that copyright owners do not wrongly insist on the removal of materials that actually do not infringe their copyrights, the safe harbor provisions require service providers to notify the subscribers if their materials have been removed and to provide them with an opportunity to send a written notice to the service provider stating that the material has been wrongly removed. [512(g)] If a subscriber provides a proper “counter-notice” claiming that the material does not infringe copyrights, the service provider must then promptly notify the claiming party of the individual’s objection. [512(g)(2)] If the copyright owner does not bring a lawsuit in district court within 14 days, the service provider is then required to restore the material to its location on its network. [512(g)(2)(C)]
A proper counter-notice must contain the following information:
* The subscriber’s name, address, phone number and physical or electronic signature [512(g)(3)(A)]
* Identification of the material and its location before removal [512(g)(3)(B)]
* A statement under penalty of perjury that the material was removed by mistake or misidentification [512(g)(3)(C)]
* Subscriber consent to local federal court jurisdiction, or if overseas, to an appropriate judicial body. [512(g)(3)(D)]
If it is determined that the copyright holder misrepresented its claim regarding the infringing material, the copyright holder then becomes liable to the OSP for any damages that resulted from the improper removal of the material. [512(f)]”
(http://www.chil.../faq.cgi#QID130)
Somehow I doubt Yahoo!/flickr has followed through on this part of the DMCA quid pro quo. If not, their failure is actionable.
I would like to point out here — as I did in the now censored “help” thread — that flickr continues to allow a picture of President Bush with a riflescope reticle aimed between his eyes to remain up despite federal law making such threats illegal.
Yes, I realize it’s not much of a threat. But the Jokerbama image was clearly fair use.
When the discussions turned negative on President Bush the thread would go on for days, even months.
Yahoo is becoming less relevant by the day. If not for Yahoo! Finance and fantasy football I would never use them, for anything.
Another media outlet protecting “The One”. What else is new in America?
i didnt even know yahoo actually offered services till like 2 months ago.
Flickr doesn’t want to spend money on legal fees. Easier to cave in to a complaint than spend money fighting. Flickr’s there to make money, not defend freedom of speech or artistic freedom. They’re more like a Hollywood movie studio in this regard than, say, Larry Flint.
Saying you’re in favor of free speech is something anyone can do. It’s good advertising. It sounds good. It reaches the young audience that’s Flickr’s demographic: “Kawabunga, Dude! I’m in favor of, like, freedom!” So, what? In the end it’s about money for them and going to court adversely affects the bottom line. This is true of all photo share sites, not just Flickr.
Individual companies can restrict free speech on their own property (say, their own servers).
The 1st amendment means the government cannot restrict your speech. Unless the federal government owns Yahoo, they were well within their rights.
http://blog.fli.../20/we-watched/
Yahoo is the corn-infused dingleberry hanging at the end of a hair in the internet’s ass.
There is something richly ironic about responding to a thread where their users are complaining about censorship by shutting down the thread.
But unfortunately shutting down threads when users complain is the name of the game at Flickr. Almost daily for the past few weeks users have been complaining about Flickr deleting their accounts for no good reason and without warning.
Almost every single one of these complaint threads has ended up being shut down by Flickr staff.
What’s more I’ve personally been banned indefinitely from this forum on Flickr. My crime? Pointing people to a blog where people were complaining about Flickr nuking gay-oriented accounts. http://saynotof...r.blogspot.com/
Here are several examples (all from this month) of other accounts where users have been complaining about account flickr censorship and account deletions only to end up having their complaint threads locked by Flickr Staff.
If you read the staff reasons for shutting down all of these threads one after another you’ll find them almost laughable.
http://www.flic...89/#reply673196
http://www.flic...e2/#reply671324
http://www.flic...11/#reply669837
http://www.flic...51/#reply669698
http://www.flic...e2/#reply668373
http://www.flic...86/#reply668362
http://www.flic...31/#reply666557
Flickr has a systematic pattern of shutting down threads where their users complain and that’s too bad. While no company likes reading things on the web that are critical of them, censoring complaints about censorship is generally not the best PR strategy.
Nor is banning members from your forums for that matter. Not only am I banned from this Flickr forum, but several of my friends are who have criticized flickr in the past as well.
Political discussions are never, ever, ever friendly. I competely support Flickr in this decision to shut off comments. I haven’t read through them but I’m sure it was just a bunch of conservatives whining because they hate Obama. They have every right to hate Obama but the place to discuss politics is NOT on Flickr.
That’s just a little funny, ’cause you’re sure it was just a bunch of conservatives whining which implies that you’re sure there weren’t any liberals whining about conservatives whining on the thread. Don’t get me wrong, I, too, am sure liberals wouldn’t stoop to whining on a thread…but it is something as of an assumption.
The best thing that Yahoo! ever did was not to purchase Google.
Yahoo is a company not the Federal government, and as such, there are no assurances of freedom of speech, only an ill-defined assurance that open discussion will be respected. You can complain as a customer that you feel you are getting an inferior product or a contract has been violated, but that’s about it.
And these are commercial products. That the companies give away much of their services for free doesn’t make it less so. So complaining about Yahoo is sort of like complaining about a toaster. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.
As far as Yahoo giving information to the US government ala their agreement with China, that has been the case at least since the Patriot Act and probably before that. The email providers and IPs have a pre-arranged, warrant-based relationship with Federal authorities that basically gives the Feds whatever they want.
But like all media companies, when they allow one form of political speech, such as all the images of Bush, then they need to allow all forms of political speech. That is a legal requirement. If they choose to censor one, then it needs to be blanket and across the board. Yahoo publicly states that they are a media company, so they should be subject to the same laws as all other media companies.
What is this legal requirement that you are talking about? There is no such thing.
Your right, my bad. I was thinking about the “Equal Time” rule which only applied to broadcasters and was pretty much eliminated under Pres. Reagan. I went and looked it up after your post. Thanks
Sean and Jake: did you read the first sentence of the Flickr staff person’s post? Flickr weather you guys see it or not is a PUBLIC forum. If you start picking and choosing people’s content you will find yourself in muddy waters. especially if that choosy-ness is not in your Terms Of Service. And doubly so if the claim of valid censorship (DMCA takedown) is bogus or unfounded. we here in the good ‘ol U S of A call that discrimination… does this sound illegal to you? treat all peeps equal = no probs. censor people you don’t agree with and/or are at odds with you while allowing others that do not conflict with your pride (read: not TOS), to carry on the same methods of expression = discrimi… go on you can finish it.
What I am saying is regardless of its designation as a public forum, your right to free speech is not guaranteed except in your interaction as a citizen with the Federal government. Yahoo is a company. Yahoo may call this a public forum, but it is public forum that they own and control. It is a commercial product. They can do with it what they like. Calling it a public forum is at best a marketing strategy to attract people to their product.
Now if you feel like they have violated a contract, either real or implied, that governs their provision of services to you, either for free or for a fee, then you can fight with them about that perhaps.
This is not to say that Yahoo hasn’t done something that is at least awkward or two-faced based on its professed policies. But these claims of censorship and discrimination are specious. They just don’t apply. Walk into a lawyers office with these arguments. They’ll sympathize with your frustration and anger, but there isn’t really a legal argument here based either on freedom of speech or discrimination.
Like I said before, this is a commercial issue. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. That’s the best way to register your displeasure, not by wasting your breath on claims of discrimination and censorship.
100% right. Thank you for saying it.
+1
Someone who actually knows that law and doesn’t just use their gut reaction, whether you agree with the decision or not.
Flickr does it again and again. I remember this post: http://franztoo.de/?p=332
What Billy said, nuff said.
The irony in this matter, is the thing that most differentiates Flickr from rest of the photo sharing sites…ding…ding…ding. Yes, it’s their community of contributors. Contributors in photography, video, and commenting. No other photo sharing site of this size has this quality of community in my opinion. Silencing the community is like yahoo stabbing it’s own heart over and over again, but I know they already cut off their nose, despite their face, so the heart is the next logical organ to obliterate.
This should come as no surprise. Yahoo has a blatant and deep liberal agenda which has to reach to their top management.
I challenge anyone to track the selected so-called “TOP NEWS STORIES” on the Yahoo front page on a daily or hour-by-hour basis over time, and objectively rate each chosen headline as favoring or not favoring a political party or perspective.
What you will find is a predictable mix which breaks down to a percentage of conservative bashing and a percentage of liberal swoon. Regardless of your party inclination, if you put that aside and spreadsheet what Yahoo is engineering in terms of social spin, you will be hard pressed not to concur. The math is obvious.
In addition, when they link to AP news articles, you will note that the originating Yahoo headline link text is often different from the actual AP headline itself–to the extent that they “add their own new meaning” to the actual article. Sometimes the difference is absolutely jarring.
There is little doubt about the political agenda of Yahoo management. I would expect that permeates their entire organization.
Hey Tom, my recommendation is when pressing your case approach it from a Freedom of Speech perspective and not from a Liberal Vs. Conservative perspective. While some of those undertones may be present, when you approach it that way no one will listen you and will right you off as a right wing crackpot. People who may have been sympathetic will not want to be seen aligning themselves to you.
Just my personal recommendation.
It will be interesting to see if all those castigating Yahoo for their actions will actually close their Flickr & other Yahoo accounts & move to other service providers. My guess is no they won’t, they’kll be quite happy to moan, moan, moan but not actually do anything about it.
It’s great entertainment watching Flickr/Yahoo dig themselves even deeper. Schadenfreude, I think they call it.
What if the guy who uploaded the picture stole the image from the original creator and the original creator made the DMCA complaint? Then Flickr would be obligated, both morally and legally, to take the picture down.
Everyone is letting their free speech idealism cloud the reality of the situation. The fact is, there could have been a legitimate claim by a legitimately harmed artist. Pulling it down to investigate the validity of the claim doesn’t seem like such a big deal when you realize the copyright issue isn’t with the parody piece itself, it could be with the originality of the piece that was uploaded by the 20 year old college student.
I think Mr. Arrington flew off the handle without considering all the angles of Copyright Law.
It has nothing to do with Time being infringed. It has to do with a potential author of the original piece of art being infringed.
When you consider that, I think another post and a correction may be warranted.
You can create original works of art from pictures.
Look at Shepard Fairey.
The hypothesis that Silicon Bear is making is that the joker image was stolen, not the original photograph of Obama.
United Socialist States of America?
Yahoo isn’t a part of the federal government. I know the truth may hurt your insanely dumb argument, but it is true.
Companies like Flickr (and if they wanted, TechCrunch) can restrict comments.
Though how an individual, non-governmental company taking down a comment means the U.S. is socialist is such a complete leap of faith it makes me wonder if you know what socialism is.
Actually, it makes me know for sure that you do not.
Based on this article and the comments, it seems like people are just assuming that this DMCA was politically motivated. The article even specifically says that the political nature of the image should have given flickr pause before they complied. Never mind that the author thinks flickr should be advocating for its users even when the users have clear avenues of defense that they can take themselves. Never mind that the author seems to be suggesting that political free speech si somehow more worthy of flickr’s protection that other types.
No, what has me most irritated about the unjustified outrage that TechCrunch is showing here, are the assumptions being made about the legality of the DMCA itself. Admittedly, DMCA is far from perfect, and takedowns are unjustly issued all the time, but that doesn’t mean that’s what happened in this case. Only flickr (and, presumably, the image creator) know for sure who filed the claim. It could have been any number of entities (and probably wasn’t a politically motivated action, in any case). It could have been DC or WB, who owns the rights to the joker image (probably not). It also could have been Time Magazine, who’s magazine cover was left in the image, most likely out of laziness. The use of the Time Magazine logo is not clearly fair use as the author suggests. The cover photo, sure, but explain to me how the use of Time’s logo and headlines text is in any way a parody? The text wasn’t altered in any way, and had nothing to do with any statement being made by altering the image.
Bottom line, it’s entirely possible that the DMCA was legitimate. Unless the author is claiming more knowledge than he included in the article.
As for them closing the thread… Did you look at it? Their motivations for doing so were also very likely not political, but rather were concerned with the performance and stability of the site. They posted many warnings to users who were posting images in the comment thread. The majority of the last few dozen comments were from a single poster who was providing inaccurate information about the whole issue. They were closing a thread that had become a maintenance and moderation nightmare.
Basically, it seems to me that the entire situation, from start to finish, has been potentially misinterpreted and misrepresented.
Yahoo’s a little bitch. Too bad I recently paid for some services. Next year, cancelled.
It looks like this thread has devolved into antics and gone off the rails so I’m shutting it down. The OPs question has been answered here. This post was removed because the TechCrunch Copyright Team received a complete Notice of Infringement.
So, if you are so sure the takedown notice is bullshit, why don’t YOU post the image, Mr Arrington?
i guess i’m just too scared.
or http://www.tech...is-the-courage/
And those hourly pageviews Yahoo’s getting from my.yahoo.com? No more. Moving to iGoogle.
Let me see what other services I can cancel with Yahoo. Hmmm….
Look, the Obama/Joker Parody is extremely distasteful, bordering on grotesque. So are the Bush parodies. (Yes, I’m a conservative!)
I’m tired of people waiving the 1st Amendment around to do any selfish, perverted act that they can think or act out. Have a little decency for crying out loud. America is suffering from a very deep perversion that is rooted in a self-centered, self-gratification mindset. Hey, get over yourself. It’s not about you!
Our prosperity and self-centered ways may just lead us to the biggest downfall ever recorded in history. Wake up! Work together! And stop relying on the government to bail you out of every little “issue” that arises.
Ask me if I care how tired you are of people waving the First Amendment to act selfishly. Selfishness is my right. I do not need the government to tell me what is good for me. I know what’s good for me because I’m selfish enough to work hard enough to get it. America’s suffering is not caused by selfishness; it’s caused by people riding high horses telling me to care for the greater good. Screw that. BTW I am also a conservative
Yes I am glad you think YOU can define policy for America.
Not about you of course.
that pesky first amendment can be so tiresome.
The First Amendment refers to the government, not individual companies.
The Supreme Court has ruled so in the past a number of times.
Wow..if only there had been the same level of opposition to the Iraq war, and every other war waged by the US administration over the decades, to the removal of a photo by Flickr!
An army of cloned rednecks, with vehement opposition to nothing more than their right to carry a deadly weapon and deny others a decent health system, are having their strings pulled by powerful business interests but they are too stupid to see it.
I’m sorry if I don’t feel like being coerced into paying for someone else’s bills. By the way my Comcast is due soon, would you be willing to cover me? Obama wants me to pay for other peoples’ mortgages, but he doesn’t want to get my rent for me.
yuhuuuuuuuu!!