Diecast model cars and flickr, don’t seem to mix!
Most of you have probably heard of or even used flickr.com for storing or showcasing your prized photos. Its an online photo sharing site that is associated with Yahoo. I have several accounts there and use them to share vacation photos to family members. So when the other day I decided to upload some diecast model car pictures to share with all of you, little did I know I would be targeted by some flickr staff for violating some policy!
I received an email stating that I could not include a link to my website (diecast-4less.com) because I had auctions and sold stuff there. I found this funny since I don’t sell a single car on this site. But I could understand, because I had some eBay ads or google ads, they incorrectly perceived it to mean I was selling something. Ok, so I did what they asked, which was to remove the url from the description of the photos. Soon after doing so, I emailed them and let them know that I didn’t sell anything on my site but that I would remove the links as suggested. A few hours later I received a reply, stating they now wanted me to remove the url watermark from my photos too! They wanted the “.com” to be removed from my photos and in the email they said that because my blog had “links to products being sold on Ebay” I could not show my domain name. So finally I went ahead and deleted any photos that included my url as they requested. Earlier when I got the first email, they had flagged my account so that people could not search for my photos, lets see if they will lift that flag now.
Well, as I am writing this, I just got another email from flickr stating that they still see a lot of images with my url on it! This is really getting ridiculous, because non of them have the watermark url! I find this all very frustrating, but amusing at the same time, after all wouldn’t it be better if they spent their time chasing after people who upload illegal photos or copyrighted material? I would think so! Well, that’s enough of my ranting for one day. I’ll let my flickr account rest for a while and next time I want to pick a fight, I’ll upload some of my Matchbox or Hot Wheel photos to flickr!
