Screenshot Accounts 'Delisted' on Flickr

An anonymous reader writes "Flickr and Second Life fans seem to have collided head-on over a little known policy on Flickr that 'delists' an account from public areas, including search, when more than half of your content is non-photographic in nature. Flickr stated that most people searching the site are looking for photographic content so the restriction is in place merely to keep the site focused on its original intent. From the article: 'As a result, many screenshots on Flickr are AWOL — at least as far as the general public is concerned. That's angering and confusing some of the people who carefully stage scenes in the popular virtual world and religiously post the results online.'"

Makes Sense

Flickr is all about photographs, so it makes sense that that's what they focus on. If you need a place to post SL screen shots, there's still deviantart, renderosity, and myspace. There are quite a few options other than just flickr.

Re:Makes Sense

Why should flickr change their policy?

Its creators wanted a site to share photographs. Why should they have to accomodate anyone who doesn't want to use the site as intended? There are countless other options for sharing images other than photographs.

If I go into your house and start using your bedroom as a toilet should you be forced to accommodate me? Of course not. I'm in your house, I should abide by your rules. It's essentially the same situation here

simple solutions

This is easy enough to fix. You can take pictures of your computer monitor with a camera, then upload those. Or you can take your screenshot, print it out, scan it back in, then upload the scan. There's a bunch of ways around this. C'mon, use a little creativity, people!

Re:simple solutions

My post was intended as a joke, but your response brings up an interesting semantics issue.

Picture of your monitor != a photo

If using a camera to take a picture of something doesn't result in a photo, then what exactly is a photo? I've generally viewed it as being a product of the device used to capture the image. Anything output by a camera would be a photo, in my opinion. However, you seem to disagree with this notion. Is a photo defined by the content of the image? Or is it something else entirely?

Re:simple solutions

Photos are like porn--you know them when you see them.

Virtual != Real (yet)

Is true that these digital representations are not real photography but how long until you cant diferentiate from a real scene and one generated on a virtual world.

Maybe Flickr should start thinking about having 2 sections :
Real photography
Virtual photography

Re:Virtual != Real (yet)

They do. Then they delist the virtual one from the search engine, because their site isn't meant to be for looking at some stranger's screenshots.

Also, this is not news; it was in the click-through agreement from way back, and people who actually draw their own pictures in photoshop or whatever have already hit the problem, had an argument with Flickr and lost once already.

If nerd X isn't allowed to post homemade hentai, I see no reason why they would let nerd Y post a 3rd-rate imitation of same in Second Life.

Re:Virtual != Real (yet)

While I appreciate that digital cameras have somewhat blurred the distinctions, I still feel that it's a hell of a stretch equating screenshots with photographs. Even a perfectly photo-realistic scene captured from a game wouldn't be a photograph to my mind; that would require pointing an actual, physical object at some other, actual physical objects and pressing a button (or even saying "take photograph!" for that matter). Maybe I'm just an old stick in the mud.

I'm not arguing that purely digital representations aren't art, just that they're not photographs, in the same way that a painting or a sculpture isn't.

Mr. Literal-Minded has the obvious answer.

Instead of posting an electronic "screenshot," take an actual photograph of a computer screen... with some desk clutter like a soda can or a yellow Post-It note in the frame.

Heck, you could probably take a single photo like that and use an image editor to paste the screenshot into the genuine screen image. If television ads can get away with "picture simulated," why not Flickr users?

Delisted, not removed.

They are simply delisted. Nobody WANTS to search for your crappy 'I'm so awesome' screenshots. All of your stuff can still be accessed, just not by people who don't care.

Big freaking deal.

My Rights Online?!!

And what pray tell, do Flickrs policies and actions have any relevance to my rights online or any rights offline?!!!

If you dont like Flickrs actions, dont use them anymore. This isnt a holy violation of your rights or anything else.

Re:My Rights Online?!!

Because it's discrimination against virtual people.

Non what?

Am I the only one who read that as "non-pornagraphic" the first time?

Stop whining

If I really really want a steady crapflood of WoW Wedding shots, I'll tick the "bore me senseless" option. You can put what you like on Flickr, just don't assume anyone else gives a damn. Delisting is a good thing for people who want to use the site as it was intended.

If you're really that obsessed with having people look at your uninteresting life, why not go and get one. Then take pictures of it. Sheesh.

They're screwing themselves ...

It doesn't seem like it would be too terribly difficult to circumvent the block.

However, Ito's images do show up in the Flickr group pools for his guild, We Know, and for World of Warcraft, because more than half of the images in his account are traditional photographs. In Ito's Flickr account, images he has taken of Helsinki, Finland, and Vancouver, British Columbia, show up beside an image of guild members setting out for a hike in World of Warcraft.

Just upload a crap load of pictures, yours or ones you find randomly on the `net, and then add all the screenshots you wish.

They're pissing off members and potentially generating monumental amounts of useless data on their servers.

Instead of an "on | off" switch for the entire account they need to have it be selective per image. But good luck writing effective code for that.

No big deal.

I can totally see Flickr's side of the issue, it was never intended to be another deviantart/imageshack/whatever. Free image hosts are a dime a dozen these days. And if you do really want to stay on flickr, upload enough random real-life photos to satisfy the more-than-half requirement.

Their own domain?

You know, it's not that hard or costly to setup your own domain and Coppermine (or whatever image package you like). Not to mention you don't have to put up with ads or whatever other nonsense those public sites make you deal with.

What is Flickr's business model?

If they are positioning themselves as some kind of photography site, then fair enough. But it seems Flickr's focus is on the sharing aspect rather than the photography aspect. I suspect that the original intention of this limitation was to stop people from turning Flickr into the average viral cartoon/funny photoshop picture dump, and that overzealous employees took it a bit too literally.

After all, is there any significant difference between capturing a scene from the real world and capturing a scene from a fictional world? That makes a difference to their business model?

I expect the policy will be clarified to allow things like screenshots from virtual worlds, but disallow things like movie posters and screenshots from desktop applications.

Honestly,

just get some web space of your own and then you can post whatever you want online.

There are plenty of affordable hosting providers that are cheap and allow for easy installation of Gallery or another OSS photo gallery application.

There's a simple solution

Instead of using the Print Screen key, just point your trusty Digital Rebel at the screen and voila ... real photo.

Who's rights, where?

This could be a useful slashdot section, but we keep getting these stories that don't have anything to do with 'rights' at all, much less the reader's rights... Somtimes even the online part is a stretch.

So, some website actually implemented their policy, and some self-important people with a misguided sense of propriety got pissed about it. News for Nerds? Absolutely! Your rights online? Not a chance.

Market Forces

So why don't people use Photobucket [photobucket.com] or Snapfish [snapfish.com] or Snapzilla [sluniverse.com] or VillagePhotos [villagephotos.com] or Zoto [zoto.com] or TinyPic [tinypic.com] or SmugMug [smugmug.com] or Greatest Journal [greatestjournal.com] or...

My personal favorite DeviantArt [deviantart.com]?

There's not much of a story here except that if you commit to one hosting service, you run the risk of them being complete jerks with your content choice.

I need "vaccations"

Why did I read "non-pronographic in nature" ?

Man, its been a long time since the last "blast" (2 days).

"Honey! Were are U?" :)

Need my morning coffee

I at first read that as 'non-pornographic in nature'.
I was about to add Flickr to my bookmarks

Your Rights Online?

This has to be one of the most ridiculous misapplications of this topic that I've ever seen.

1. You have no right, natural, God-given or otherwise, to have your content hosted on Flickr.

2. The accounts have not been deleted, they have just been delisted. That means that they won't show up in a search.

3. As I understand it, you can still provide people with direct links to the screenshots.

Please, help me out here - in what way is this a YRO issue?

How do they know?

Do they really have people looking at the pics? Or is there an algorithm they use?

Sorry if this was mentioned somewhere; I didn't see it.

My So Called Virtual Life

Hmm, it looks like Flickr is between a rock and a hard place. I don't know exactly how they do it now, but I would guess they use automation to flag images that are not considered photographic. It's just too big a job to do this manually, even if you offshore the whole thing to a low wage country. So if they decide that due to demand, to allow "photos" of users' virtual lives in WoW, SL, FFXI, etc., then policing it is going to be a real challenge. There are ways to make it easier to automate this, but the things I have in mind right now would require some tech saavy on the part of the user. It would not be wise to assume that just because someone figured out how to take an in-game snapshot, that they also know how to either add the necessary digital tags say, or avoid wiping said tags during the editing process. And of course this would be open to the usual abuse fueled by commercial interests. Some kind of community based policing might be the best bet, but none of these solutions will be perfect. And this all assumes that there is enough demand for this from Flickr customers. If not, they could just keep quiet and wait for the next story to make people forget about this!

Is it so hard to follow a site's rules?

Flickr is a free site originally designed for photographers. Screenshots of Second Life or any other game are not photography. Seems pretty simple huh?

Go find a different host if you can't accept Flickr's rules.

As long as I can get to my poneys...

As long as I can still get to the OMG!!! PONEYS!!! [flickr.com] version of Slashdot, I'll be fine. At least I'll always be able to make my own sign [cmdrtaco.com].

Why...

Why is this YRO? People signed up for a free service on a website, abused that service, and so their QoS was decreased. This is no different than the way angelfire / geocities won't let you use images stored on their sites as avatars on web forums (without some creative workarounds, at least). Is that a story worthy of YRO?

This is a travesty- If only John Kerry were pres..

Blame them neocons for doing this. If only John Kerry were president this would have never happened. he would have immediately brought this before the UN and sanctions would have been forthcoming. I refused to take the Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker off my truck.

Downside of Web 2.0

Here we see the downside of Web 2.0. Apps available for the asking? Cool. The problem is that what happens to my data is completely up to the whim of the people running these sites. People are _shocked_ when something that they throw onto someone else's web site is moved around, or removed entirely. Wake up. The bargain you've made for all these freebies is loss of control.

Posting Screenshots - Justification

Flickr user Pentadact has a rather nice justification on his Flickr profile [flickr.com]:

Taking screenshots in games is just like taking photos in real life, only you're in mortal danger at all times and occasionally have to kill people backwards whilst taking them. They're photographs as much as any picture of something someone else made is.

I entirely agree with what he says there, although I can imagine Flickr adding a new flag to their picture browsing. Currently, there's "May Offend". Soon, maybe there'll be "Not a photograph"?

Sounds like there's a market

...to serve the needs of these folks. Anyone want to partner with me on a new screenshots only server site? ...the name screenjism.com immediately comes to mind mmhmm. gigigiddey

This is why. . .

If you don't have a static IP, You go to say, hostmysite or dreamhost, get your own virtual server, and install Gallery2 then you can post anything from nudie pics to screenshots to landscapes, or even copyrighted videos and you won't get shut down. You might get an angry letter if you post copyrighted material you do not own then the courts might order you to shut down, but at least no one else will have any say in what you post.

What section would you put it in?

To all the folks complaining about this being in YRO, what section/sections would you consider proper for this topic? Games? Politics? It seems to fit best here for me at least even if it is not technically about "rights". Do we really have rights online anyway or do our ISPs TOS come first. Or is the section really meant to be Your Rights (Discussed) Online?

Screenshots sites

A friend of mine developed a site specifically for screenshots in virtual worlds:

http://multitap.net/ [multitap.net]

It's fairly popular, easy to use, has an API so you could hack it straight into WoW. Maybe some of you upset by flickr would like this?

Pornography?

Am I the only one who read "when more than half of your content is non-pornographic in nature"? That would make flickr interesting...

23

Use 23 [23hq.com] instead. Pretty much the same service but without the lock-in and delisting of screenshots.

Easy solution

Search: [__________] ( ) Photographs (*) Games/Video Screenshots ( ) CG art

Now, that wasn't too hard, was it?

You've all missed the point!

This was really just a gag article posted by Slashdot editors to take the pulse of herd attitude regarding Flickr. Obviously, to judge by the number of indignant "Flickr has every right!" and "Down with screenshots!" posts, it's apparent that Flickr is still in the upper-right quadrant of Slashdot love.

Well done. Carry on!

I guess I'm confused a

The only thing you can't do with screenshots is search for them on flickr's site.

You can still link to them from other sites, use them in [img] tags on websites, etc.

You just can't use flickr's search box to find them.

So... what's the big deal? Does anyone really search flickr for screenshots?

Blog is journalism? Photos != Screenshots?

I am enginecoder. This mean I am god of a tiny universe where I create the Light, the Shadows, the Fire and Water. How It looks, How It Feels. And after creating that, you make screenshots. But making screenshots on this virtual univers is exactly the problem you have making photos on a real shot. Where put camera?, What angle? What details in/out?. So yes, SL screenshots are photos. Imho.

Can anyone say, "Opportunity?"

This is the type of thing that someone could jump on -- make a flickr competitor that doesn't have the photographic focus -- maybe add features that the MMORPG people want, and they will flock from flickr fast!

non-pornographic in nature?

That's how I read it... i was like WTF? Is this for real? Is that what people really use Flickr for?

Bad Move By Flickr

This move could result in them loosing more than 3/4 of their user base whom happen to be "Second Life" users. I've heard from a lot users inside Second Life that they are moving to Snapzilla (http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/) and abandoning their old Flickr accounts. Some of these people make money at the events their screenshots promote, and this policy could impact their business which is a very bad things for Flickr.

Flickr has to learn something about offering services on the web, the hard way. If you burn your user base they'll leave and there is nothing you can do to make them come back because once burned they'll never trust you again. During the first Internet Bubble I can't even begin to count the number of sites that died because of stuff like this.

Bye bye Flickr, its been nice knowing you but it appears you are bound and determined to "policy" yourself out of business. Oh well, looks like Snapzilla will be replacing you soon.

So what if...

I take a screenshot of secondlife containing object, larger than 50% of the screen which is texture mapped with a photo? Is that allowed? Hmm!

Or what if the object is texture mapped with a photo of my computer screen with secondlife running containing an object texture mapped with a photo of my comp... [Error Stack Overflow]

Snapzilla

Of course there's always Snapzilla [sluniverse.com], which was made for exactly this purpose.

I have a paid-for flickr "Pro" account, I wonder if this affects them too? Doesn't really matter though, as I rarely use it anyway.

I ran into this problem with Flickr before...

And here (not verbatim) was their response. "PhotoGRAPH = film, Image = digitally created without the use of a camera. You lose."

The number it takes to delist is subjective

I had over 1000 photographs on my flickr page when I uploaded about 40 images that were straight reproductions of a series of public domain paintings and drawings.

I was promptly delisted, I think maybe because one of the paintings made it to the "interesting" page.

Well duh.

This is what Snapzilla [sluniverse.com] is for. Or an image gallery on http://pics.livejournal.com/shatterstripes/gallery /00006bp6 [livejournal.com]>Livejournal or Blogger or whatever you prefer, or on your own website. Fickr is for photographs, not general image hosting. Screenshots of a video game are not photos - if they were, we'd call them that.

No imagination

"The rationale is that when people do a global search on Flickr, they want to find photos," Butterfield said.

Don't dictate how users should use your service, jackass. If people are finding screenshots when they want photos, they should learn how tags work. Flickr should focus their efforts on making their UI less horrific instead of whining about completely subjective issues.

I don't want to look at people's boring Second Life shots, but I don't want to look at their boring everyday life photos either. Flickr's policy presumes that people do not (cannot?) use screenshots as a means of expression, or as appreciation of notable game art and design.

Use manditory tags...

Create a "Lives in Parents Basement" tag and make it mandatory on anything from WoW. Filter out that tag, problem solved...:-)

Being Flexible

I ran into this policy early on in Flickr's career when I posted scans of a bunch of my cartoons. Flickr blank-screened them, arguing that they were a 'photo' site. I finally convinced them to turn my scans back on, but only after a dozen emails back and forth. I think the only reason they caved is because I was one of their very first paying customers when they went live.

This is another case of a company not being responsive to its customers' needs. Sure, their original vision was the sharing of photos. But if their paying customers want to share all kinds of images, why not expand their business model to embrace that? They'll have more happy customers in the long run.

If Flickr wants to emplasize the 'photo' aspect, then set up 'types' to let users and viewers filter their views and searches. If someone wants to view only photos, they could. If somebody else wanted screenshots only, so be it. It seems easy to me.

they can add a photographs-only option

Flickr can add an option to show only photographs (which will probabaly be activated by default while the user can change it). But if they don't want at all non-photographs, and they want to discurage people from doing that, then it's a good strategy.

Re:Seems like over-moderation

Whoops! Disregard or delete this thread. I obviously misinterpreted the situation.

Re:Search option

You can't create something effective that is everything to everyone. It really is best to carve out your niche and stay in it. This is exactly what Fliky is doing and it is very wise. To do otherwise will only cause problems in the long run for both users and advertisers paying Flikr.

Scott

Re:Seems like over-moderation

Whatever I can do to be the target of your aggression ;]

Re:Seems like over-moderation

Well theres a lot of mac 'priests of the church of photoshop' on Flickr - they consider that sort of thing beneath them and blasphemous to there 'art'.

Re:Seems like over-moderation

Delisted not deleted. Still taking up file space, just not now listed. Apparently flicker has a target audience, and random crap from WoW in the listing is not what the target audience wants.