Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
I grow weary of this. PayPal, Amazon, card companies, and others over their BS decisions regarding WikiLeaks. Flickr protecting despots in Egypt. Where will it end? How many services am I going to have to boycott before they get a damned clue?
Flickr is very clear that you are sharing your OWN WORK. These are images taken by someone else.
Regardless of how you feel about breaking into government files and sharing things you find there, a place like Flickr with a very clear TOS about not publishing other people's work has every right, and should be expected to take these things down. Flickr is not Wikileaks. Find somewhere else to put the images.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, they weren't torture photos. Some were photos of empty jail cells, some photos of bags of shredded documents, others were stacks of VHS tapes with some 'explicit' Arabic writing (they had sex tapes of some Egyptian and foreign celebs, likely as blackmail). I'd show you, but of course they're down. I'm sure some news articles and twitter posts mirrored a few of them.
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?
It's hard to comment without knowing what we're talking about. If those were pictures of people being tortured, then if you were one of those people would you want your suffering and humiliation shown around the world? There are ways of getting the word out without harming the torture victims again.
On the other hand if the faces were blurred, or the photos were just of implements of torture, than I don't see the need to remove them.
They were photos of the torturers themselves. All you had to do was visit the guy's site to find this out. But now that you know, how tough does the call feel to you?
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
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.
I think you just misspelled "stupid."
This is what happens when you love rule of law so much that you follow laws, rules, policies, terms of service, and end user license agreements over basic ethics.
Whether or not Flickr is justified in removing the images at all, the manner in which they did it is unacceptable. It would be very easy to accuse them of using their TOS (their rule of law) to hide behind the fact that they just don't like the content of the photos themselves.
As TFA points out, this is selective enforcement.
Flickr isn't part of any government, and I see nothing that suggests they took the photos down under the orders of one. So, dick move? yeah, reprehensible? sure, but censorship? not really.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
It looks like Anonymous has republished the photo and has tweeted that they are a gift to the Egyptian People. You can see the photos here: http://www.pdf-archive.com/2011/03/13/egyptofficers-rev-840/egyptofficers-rev-840.pdf and Anonymous' tweet on the subject here: http://twitter.com/#!/Anony_Ops/status/46799870304071680
Quite right. Gawker has some
I don't understand why censorship is always seen as something only a government can do. If you alter or remove something based on it's content (i.e. not because you need the disk space or similar) you are literally a censor. That's the definition of censorship.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
What happened here is censorship. What you describe is merely legal censorship. Because it is legal, it dont mean it is the right thing to do.
There is no recourse against legal corportate censorship. But peoples are free to complain and presure them anyway they see fit. Bloging, writing articles, posting comments are all acceptable way for the public to communicate its disagrement. It is up to them to see if, considering the shitstorm, that unpopular move was worth it.
No one sued Flickr over some "VIOLATE MY FREE SPEECH AMENDMENTS! OMG!" claim, WTF is your problem?
Flickr just removed the photos from its own site. The people who uploaded the photos are free to host them on Picasa, Imageshack, Yfrog, etc. etc.
This is not censorship. Flickr is not saying that they (users) can't host the photos anywhere; they're just saying that, for whatever reason, these photos are not welcome on Flickr.
When we throw words like "censorship" around willy-nilly, we weaken the real meaning of the word.
I urge people to switch away from FlickR, to other photosharing sites like SmugSmug or others.
:
IPernity is a community-oriented photo-sharing site, with an interface similar to the original flickr interface.
Here is a Monkeygrease script to automatically import your flickr photos to Ipernity
https://www.ipernity.com/apps/gm
I am uploading my new photos to both site, and when Ipernity community is large enough, I will definitely close my Flickr account.
RIP Slashdot. I used to love you. dead account - but slashdot wont let me delete it.
> Censorship is an attempt by a controlling body to actually prevent information from reaching the public.
Your definition of censorship happens to differ from mine. If someone with power (Flickr) blocks the speech or expression of someone relatively without power (a random Flickr user), it is censorship.
Also, this is the second time I have to tell you this: I made no claim of being libertarian, so the final paragraph of your post is either a very misguided personal attack or a completely off-topic angry rant. It certainly has nothing to do with me or my arguments.
Because the censorship covered by the First Amendment deals only with the Government.
Your right of free speech does not imply that any third party has a duty to help you spread it. E.g. Hustler can print porn but Wal-mart are free to choose not to sell it.
If you are invited by a private party to speak or otherwise express yourself, and your speech or form of expression is removed after the fact due to its contents, this is censorship.
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?)
Yes, it is possible.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Yes:
http://gawker.com/#!5777531/inside-an-egyptian-torture-center/gallery/9
Exactly. In the US, Republicans and Democrats alike have embraced outsourcing of government services to private companies as a means of saving money.
But what we've lost as a result is accountability, regulation and Redress. No one seems to have considered the consequences of splitting up the Public Square into a million little private squares, each setting its own rules and standards. Or, perhaps, they have considered the consequences and then gone and done it anyway.
-S
A private company offers a service. Users use it. The users then starts using the service for a political agenda. The company removes the content referring to their TOS. I really cannot see the right of the users to complain.
The right to complain comes from the fundamental right called "freedom of speech" which means that, except where it interfere's with other people's fundamental rights, such as "privacy" you should be allowed to say what you want. Including complaining.
The justification for complaining comes from the fact that services such as Flikr rely on the freedoms of the modern world and our systems of justice in order to exist. These freedoms were hard fought for. Companies which do not do their little bit for these freedoms
What is MORALLY or ETHICALLY correct to do isn't always the correct thing to do business wise.
It's our job to make sure it is.
Who is to judge when a private company with its own TOS has to do something OTHERS claim to be ethical / moral correct?
Me; you; every customer of their's. If we judge them, then that will help them to head in the right direction. We should judge them fairly; we should judge them pretty laxly; we should allow them to disagree with our points of view. However, when the start getting in the way of fundamental rights such as free speech we should be as harsh as we reasonably can be.
If someone was to come up to me a claim that I had to do something because it was the "right thing to do" when I didn't want to I would get really pissed of and kick the person out.
I'm really not sure what circumstances you are imagining. Maybe you think of giving money to a cancer charity? Then I can understand you; they mostly have plenty already; you don't really know who they are. You should be able to judge yourself. The circumstances I'm thinking of are where a little girl is dying outside your house after your rottweiler ripped her throat out and the person just wants to use your phone to call an ambulance. If you would kick that person out just because they offended delicate little you then you are scum. Would you really? I don't think so.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();