Are you sure it is indeed a flickr bug? I suspect it was the problem with flickripper that I reported (and fixed) in http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikilovesmonuments/2012-October/005145.... (sadly, I only discovered it after you had manually finished copying)
I'm not sure why you need search by hash in flickr.
Also, I should note that accepting flickr contributions was always optional.