Watch out where you post

Another reason I ought to pull out of Flickr: This report of a Flickr user's photos ending up on iStockPhoto without her permission-- http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9867114-39.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Underexposed

Comments

[Paul Butzi]

Hmm.

I wonder to what extent this is a flickr problem, and to what extent if you put stuff on the web, it *will* get lifted.

That is, there are just so many participants on flickr, and every time something like this happens, the community nature of flickr means that everyone hears about it. Flickr is a big pool of photos, and very high success of reporting such problems when they occur.

In contrast, individual websites have lots of photos stolen. But the reporting of the thefts never gets spread beyond just a few friends.

It's not clear that it's a flickr problem, at least not to me. I've had photos stolen off my web site. I suppose I should check iStock and other similar places.

That's not to say there aren't compelling reasons to stay away from flickr.

In contrast,

[Chuq Von Rospach]

this is really a "if it's online, people will make copies of it" thing, not a flickr problem.

It's far from unique (or common) to flickr.