Flickr Censors Egypt Police Photos

An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday Flickr removed a photoset of Egyptian Secret Police photos which had been posted to an Egyptian journalist's Flickrstream. The photos were obtained when the journalist acquired them from what he called 'one of Mubarak's largest torture facilities.' Flickr cited the fact that the photos 'were not the user's own work' as justification for the censorship, even though Flickr staffers themselves frequently upload work that is not 'their own' to their personal photostreams."

Comments

Shame

[mr100percent]

Shame on you Flickr, they're not even explicit.
Hope someone has a mirror, and this time posted elsewhere on another site. Let's not reward them with more traffic.

Re:Shame

[grcumb]

Shame on you Flickr....

Shame indeed. I live and work and write occasional newspaper columns in the tiny nation of Vanuatu, Last week, our Minister of Infrastructure and Public Utilities arrived in the offices of our national newspaper with a gang of 8 thugs and proceeded to beat the crap out of the publisher. His sin? Telling the truth about a litany of crooked dealings the Minister was involved in.

This prompted people from all walks of life in the Pacific Islands region to stand up and make themselves heard. The staff of the Daily Post newspaper - and contributors like myself - were defiant in the face of overt coercion and threats.

Why, I would like to know, is it easier for pipsqueaks like us to stand up to government coercion than for large corporations with a stable of capable lawyers on hand and not a fear in the world for their own safety?

Of course, we already know the answer.

You don't have free speech on a corporate website

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's reality, you don't have free speech rights on some corporation's website. If you want to host your own site and put your free speech up there, don't think anyone's going to interfere.

This could have been handled a bit more gracefully. I am defending the right for an individual or business to be able to dictate the terms of content that is hosted or stored on their property. Call it whatever you want. There's a multitude of sites that will host those images no questions asked. So, why not do it?

Flickr pulled a dick move

[Chaonici]

You're the one who brought up free speech, not me.

Their policy might be fine when it comes to actual creative works. Deleting pictures like these based on the justification that you must upload your own work is valuing the letter of the rule above its spirit.

They will now get the backlash they deserve.

Re:"Ripped off", he says

[ScentCone]

As TFA points out, this is selective enforcement

And the selection criteria is: the infringing posts were very high profile. It rises to the level of being noticed by not just a few people following some guy's Flickr stream, but by possibly very large numbers of people.

Re:Tough call actually

[Jiro]

Actually, putting up photos of torturers has ethical problems that are just as bad, Saying "this guy is a torturer" and spreading it around the world is like saying "this guy is a terrorist" or "this guy is a pedophile" and spreading it around the world. It's not as if Flickr has any reason to trust a random guy off the street accusing a third party of a serious crime.

If I posted a picture of you and said "my neighbor is a terrorist", shouldn't you hope that Flickr would remove it?

(And if you say, well, these guys really are torturers, but you aren't really a terrorist, tell me how Flickr is supposed to know that?)