Photographers Upset That Flickr Is Selling Their Photos

Honestly, you would think that Yahoo would steer clear of selling photos that were intended to be free. Then again, being hard up for cash makes you do strange things.

The crux of their complaints has to do with Yahoo's use of photos contributed to Creative Commons -- a collection of photos and writing that creators have deemed free to use, with various restrictions. For Creative Commons photos, Yahoo will keep all of the profits of the sales of those canvas prints. But for prints of photos not on Creative Commons, photographers will get a 51 percent cut.

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I can sort of see Yahoo's angle on this -- the CC license can and often is a "please use this!" -- if you're not ok with commercial use, you can reserve that right (even with CC licensing).

I haven't used Flickr in years, but after trying to help out on Wiki Commons I gave up. The restrictions on the creator effectively said you had to allow free commercial use of your content. The most you could do was insist on attribution. It's also questionable if retracting the CC license will help you in any copyright claims. The best course of action is not to allow any use at all without express written permission.