Flickr and free speech…
By Sam Chimes
The internet isn’t a stranger to issues on free speech - in fact, far from it. Personally, I see the web as a bastion when it comes to expressing opinion in an open forum and I’m not alone. However, not everyone sees it that way and the most recent clash that caught my eye is between 20 year old college student Firas Alkhateeb and Flickr.
Michael Arrington has talked about this over at TechCrunch in his post, Flickr v. Free Speech. Where Is Their Courage? At the centre of the debate is an image created by Firas ‘while bored over winter school break’ of President Obama that makes him look like the Joker character from movie The Dark Knight. The image was removed for copyright infringement under the Digitial Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Michael’s issue with the furor however is more to do with the seeming willingness of Flickr to remove the image,
“It’s clear that the Flickr team wanted to take this image down. Not only was the image removed, but the entire page was taken down with all the comments to the image. There’s nothing in the DMCA that says you have to do that, too.”
This episode leaves Arrington stating that he has lost his trust in the photo-sharing site for not standing up for a user who chose to demonstrate work on their site over their competitors. Who is going to stand up for the individual online? It is certainly food for thought…
