As the flow of comments has started to slow on the Flickr post, I thought I’d let you all know what I plan to do next!
Over the next few weeks (after I’ve finished my first assignment), I’ll start collating the comments. I think what has come out from the discussion is going to be applicable to a lot of the other things I wanted to looking at for the website project.
I had just assumed (naively, perhaps) that because people were happy for bloggers to link to their work (as long as they were credited), they would also be happy for a site like The Birmingham Post to link to it too.
This, however, doesn’t seem to be completely the case. Most of the concern seems to come from the belief that – as we are a commercial publishing operation – any and all the material we link to on the web must be paid for.
I can understand that point, but I think the distinction between commercial and non-commercial spaces on the Internet needs to be looked at in more detail. Not that I’m going to do that right here and now – the comments have given me way too much to mull over!
In my head, I saw The Birmingham Post website as a place to go for news and opinion, but also as a (sorry to use this word) gateway to Brum’s professional and creative communities on the web. I still see it that way, but I now realise I need to look at how I’m going to do that in more depth.
But please keep the comments coming in, I really want to get to grips with this.
I genuinely think that anything that brings local people together with a local press is a good thing.
I think that somehow connecting the Birmingham Flickr group or any other local “tribe” come to that and the Post is a good idea in principle.
It looks to me as though people are simply concerned about being ripped off. All of the photos on the Birmingham Flickr stream are taken for the love of it – just to record the city we all live and work in. I don’t think anybody on the stream has any overt commercial motive. That’s not what it’s about.
The thing is, that some photographs can be quite valuable – and most amateur photographers don’t realise this.
There is another strand to this, and that is that blogs and Web 2.0 based initiatives, if they capture the public imagination and zeitgeist, can be extraordinarily successful. Who is to say that this little acorn might not grow into a really successful, highly visited website????? The public – the punters, need recognition. It is the punters who make these thing really work, not the corporations behind them.
BP.
lots of news agencies use flickr photos, engadget and downloadsquad which are both blog news outlets owned by AOL-Time Warner, regularly use flickr photos in there posts and articles.
e.g.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/01/16/gmail-adds-new-shortcut-e/
The key is really looking at the copyright of the image you want to use..
Flickr lets the user select any of the following CC licences.
None (All rights reserved)
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons
Attribution Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons
Attribution-NoDerivs Creative Commons
Technically the post should only use images with one of the last three licenses.
I think your on the right track, though creating a community/group within flickr that the post’s photo desk also contributes some images too. and encouraging that community to only add images to the group with a licenses that lets anybody use the image commercially or not with attribution.