There now appears to be a more formal response from Flikr concerning Rebekka
from one of its co-founders. You can read it here or go to
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/40074/page3/#reply213196
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewart/>
Stewart<http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewart/>says:[I'm one of the
co-founders of Flickr, and am the general manager with
overall responsibility for all things Flickr.]
I have to be a little quicker than I'd like because I'm writing this on a
Treo in a car in the desert, coming back from a vacation (I'm not driving -
no worries). I've gotten the whole back story from the team and have read
the forums, various Flickr groups topics and blog posts on this topic (as of
a few hours ago), so I have a pretty good idea that we screwed up -- and for
that I take full responsibility (actually, several team members are fighting
to take responsibility).
There are several policies which will be changing as a direct result of this
incident and the goal is that nothing like this ever happens again. Any
errors from now on should be on the side of caution.
It's important to be clear why the photo was deleted: it had nothing to do
with a desire to silence Rebekka from calling attention to the outfit which
had reportedly sold copies of her photos without knowledge or permission and
without compensating her (in fact, even before her photo was deleted, we
were investigating ways in which we could help Rebekka in this situation and
prevent it from happening to others).
This had nothing to do with fear of a lawsuit, but with deeply held beliefs
about the kind of place we want Flickr to be. Unfortunately, those beliefs
were misapplied in this case, but we still hold the general principle to be
true.
We spend huge amounts of time an energy to prevent unauthorized use of
Flickr members' photos through technical, policy and legal avenues: the
whole team that manages Flickr, from technical operations and engineering to
design, customer care and community management are acutely aware of the
issues and do their best on a daily basis to balance rights issues and
copyright protection with a sharing environment that is as open and dynamic
possible and let members make their own choices about how they want to play.
The photo was deleted -- again, mistakenly -- because of the direction the
comments had gone, which included posting the personal information of the
infringing company's owner and suggestions for how best to exact revenge. It
is an emotional issue and most people were there to support Rebekka in a
positive way, but some of the angry mob behavior crossed the line.
Flickr is not a venue that we will allow to be used to harass, intimidate,
threaten incite hatred against people -- even if those people have done
something wrong. We strive to be free and open, but just like laws against
crying "fire!" in a crowded theater, a desire to promote free speech has
it's limits.
We get challenging situations on Flickr all the time:
ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, ex-husbands and wives, disputes between business
partners or landlords and tenants, posting photos and text with the intent
of hurting someone else. These can be quite tricky to deal with morally and
legally, and almost all of the time we make the right choice.
Having said that, this time, we made the wrong choice. The person who made
the call is not, as has been suggested, stupid, incompetent, underpaid,
under qualified, inexperienced or mean. They just made a big mistake (and
feel inconsolably awful about it, by the way). We also did not have the
right policies in place to prevent it from happening or rectifying it
afterward. And that's entirely the responsibility of the Flickr leadership
team, and myself in particular.
So, to Rebekka: Our apologies. I'm sure you did not intend to bring on the
firestorm to the extent it developed, you were not in the wrong and it was
our fault to suggest that you were. (I will write to her directly as well).
We're taking our well-deserved lumps on this one, but have learned a painful
lesson and are doubly committed to being better stewards of this wonderful
thing called Flickr. Thank you for bearing with us and we're sorry.
*-- posted by Heather for Stewart who is on the road and won't be able to
respond until later tonight*
[edit awkward sentence in first paragraph]
Posted 10 hours ago. (
permalink<http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/40074/213196/>)
* Stewart (staff) edited this topic 9 hours ago. *
--
Khen Lim
XIOS Network Solutions
IBM Business Partner
+60 +16 528 6010 / 016 528 6010
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