[Commons-l] King of the FlickrLickrs

[Matthew Brown]

On 2/23/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 2/20/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Erik, if a Flickr user misclicked on the dropdown and selected the
> > wrong license unknowingly and unintentionally they did not make a
> > valid release under that license.
>
> There is no dropdown on the upload screen. Licensing is a user
> preference, and not an easy to find one (I just took about 3 minutes
> to find it again, even though I've been there several times -- it's
> under "Your account|Privacy & Permissions|Defaults for new uploads").

I would agree that it's vanishingly unlikely that a Flickr user would
accidentally select a Creative Commons license rather than 'All rights
reserved'.  The latter is the default; changing the upload default
isn't the most obvious thing in the Flickr interface, as Erik says.
Changing the license on an image post-update is easier, but again
unlikely to be done accidentally.

I suspect that what Greg is concerned about is that someone may intend
a CC license but inadvertently select one that is different from the
one they intended, or one they do not understand the implications of.

Since no compensation has been given to the Flickr user, no implied
contract exists and thus we don't have that protection against
accidental mis-licensing as Greg says.  I'd suspect Wikipedia and our
user who uploaded it would be fairly protected against any lawsuit for
damages, but it would still be an irritation for all.

I suspect you're both right here; Erik, that checking the status of
FlickrLickr images is a lower priority, and Greg, that it's still
ideally worth doing.

-Matt