Flickr Censorship? Stolen Photos Followup

Yesterday, I wrote about Rebekka Guðleifsdóttira and her claim that a poster company had stolen her photos. The case has taken an interesting and, in my view, unfortunate turn.

The flickr post where Rebekka had originally made her case and posted images of the stolen photos has been removed by flickr (owned by Yahoo) for the following reason:

Flickr is not a venue for to you harass, abuse, impersonate, or intimidate others. If we receive a valid complaint about your conduct, we will send you a warning or terminate your account.

Rebekka, on her blog, tells her side of the censorship story:

i don’t believe i was harrassing anyone. I was doing the only thing left for me to do when i had tried to seek legal assistance, after being victim to having my copyrighted work stolen and resold for profit by a dishonest company. I was told by my lawyer that i should just accept the fact and move on. Im not a big fan of giving up. I simply told the truth.

the fact that people sent harrassing letters to only-dreemin was a direct result of my post, but I myself wasnt harassing anyone. I was simply making it public that someone did wrong by me, and i think that’s a pretty far cry from harrassing some innocent party directly.

Seems unfair that flickr has decided on this course of action. That poster company must have a good lawyer on its side…

Thomas Hawk has lengthy editorial post about this subject for those irritated with flickr/yahoo’s decision.

3 Responses to “Flickr Censorship? Stolen Photos Followup”

  1. MARCUS says:

    Sensationalist!!!.

    I suspect her goading others to spam/corrupt and abuse them had something to do with it.

  2. dsawchuk says:

    Really? Well, since the post is gone, I can’t confirm that.

    I hope it’s not the case as it puts her in a bad light. If it is true, then I’ll be more sympathetic to Yahoo’s decision.

  3. Paul says:

    Came across this initially on http://www.photographyvoter.com and it’s going to be very interesting to see how it plays out. The issue with unauthorised use of images on Flickr and similar photo-sharing sites is becoming more and more prevalent and is one that these sites need to address..

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