Flickr Stopped Selling Users' Photos

[RoadWarrior]

The network has decided to stop selling wall-art prints created by its community of photographers following a heated debate around Creative Commons licensing. Flickr’s service that sold high-quality mounted and canvas prints appeared to be not in the “spirit” of the Creative Commons community.
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Flickr apologized and explained that images licensed through Creative Commons have been removed from the Flickr Wall Art pool. As a result, all users who have bought prints of such images will be refunded. Flickr also promised to work closely with Creative Commons to choose programs that would align better with Flickr’s community values.

In the meantime, it should be noted that despite the Yahoo-owned service deciding to exclude Creative Commons images, you are still able to order Wall Art products using your personal images or images shared by “licensed artists”. Industry observers point out that backlash against the service came from people who were upset that Yahoo was making money on the backs of the sharing community.

Originally it was supposed that Flickr would keep the profits from sales of prints based on images shared to the service through the Creative Commons “commercial attribution” license. At the same time, photographers of images that were not covered by the license were supposed to get half of the revenues.

Of course, such move sparked controversy, but in fact it was not illegal. The lawyers confirm that the prints were made from images shared to Flickr using the attribution license, and the latter allows commercial use. Responding to discontent of the public, the Electronic Frontier Foundation claimed that it didn’t appear that Flickr was doing anything wrong.