Tech & Biz

Can You Use Flickr Pics in Ads?

by pwalmsley | July 26, 2007 at 12:11 pm

644 views | 10 Recommendations | 2 comments

Uh oh, Virgin. You should know better than to piss off creative internet types. You'll get strung up faster than you can say 'Goatse!'

Virgin Mobile Australia has started an advertising campaign called "Are you with us or what?", which has been collecting images from Flickr released under a CC-BY licence, which allows commercial re-use and modification of the licensed work." (Technollama via Idea City).

Apparently, Virgin didn't have to ask for a permission to use the pictures and they didn't, but people (photographers and subjects) are pissed. All images come with a link back to the photographer's profile. An interesting problem. Here's a lively discussion happening in the comments under one such picture.

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Kaitlin

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 12:34 on July 26th, 2007

Thanks, pwalmsley. According to Flickr's policies, Virgin's usage here does not break any rules. If the people who posted the photos weren't aware of the rules, who's fault is that? Flickr users can choose the licensing they wish to choose. I can see them being put out (it's a nice courtesy to send an email saying "we're using this," after all) but they have no real ground to stand on here. It's things like this that show how ignorant people can be when it comes to their privacy and the net.