During my daily stumble through Flickr I came across a legal battle in Europe that exemplifies, I am sure, the fears of many Flickr users.
Apparently, the youth branch of Norway's conservative party stole an image from a German photographer's Flickr page and published it as the cover of their magazine, 'XTRA'. Photo here.
It was months before the photographer, Mareen, was notified.
Since filing a cease-and-desist lawyers for XTRA offered a cash settlement, but it doesn't look like Mareen and her sister, the subject of the photo, are interested.
Mareen has done a good job of documenting this incident on her Flickr page, including pictures of articles from German newspapers.
In this instance the photographer is totally in the right. As one who publishes a fair amount of my own creations on the web I take this is good reason to be fearful that some foreign entity is using my content for its own ends -- without me even knowing.
Perhaps even more frightful is the fact that as more and more user generated content starts living on the Internet those bodies that host the material (Flickr, You Tube, etc) will likely not stand up for those 'little guys' who use their service.
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