Blasi Blah

So recently I ran into a problem with Flickr where someone claimed that photos I had taken were not mine. Now mind you I never upload the RAW format or Original size images, I always scale them down and I always keep the originals safely backed up in two places one on optical media (DVDs) and the other on a Portable Hard Drive I keep with me and my laptop.

So basically after someone made a simple claim that these photos were theirs Flickr completely deleted the account. Now when they did that all of my associations with groups, other members and friends and family were completely wiped out. At no time did Flickr ever even ask me to prove they were mine they just took the other persons word for it. I would have had no issues if they had simply suspended the account and asked for my proof but I think they acted to quickly and too much on the extreme.

The other part of the reason for closing the account was that the account had photos uploaded by multiple people which got me thinking because there are hundreds of non-profits using flickr for their group, I know because I have recommended it as a good solution for some. This particular account was one used by a group I am a member of and it contained over 8k photos uploaded, tagged, shared, part of groups, hosted on other sites, hosted on the group account and now they are all gone. Every photo, association and friendship made by the group has been wiped out.

So now you are asking what does all of this have to do with non profit organizations and religious groups. Well the sad part is that one of the other reasons given for terminating the Flickr account was that it was not a personal account and that Flickr was not meant to be used for groups. So I decided to do some looking because over the years I have put over a thousand organizations onto Flickr as a means to host their images of events and network with more people who may be interested in their message. What I found is that many groups have been having their accounts closed for this very reason, by doing a simple google search I am finding these stories from churches, non-profits, a few boy scout troops, as well as many other clubs and organizations.

The only consistency is that they are not doing it to the larger groups only the smaller ones. I could not find anything to show they have done this to a large or well known organization such as several of the Children’s Hospitals, and large congregation churches however when it comes to small groups with little to no national recognition they seem to not care. All of that basically says to me that they do not want the bad publicity of taking on a national non-profit organization or a huge church however when it comes to those small non-profits they have no problems with just pushing them away.

This is a real problem, think about the kind of impact it would have on your organization if your online account were to completely disappear over night loosing your short URL, your contacts and followers, and if you are using the Flickr API to show image galleries on your site you will loose that as well. What kind of reaction or view on your organization would this deliver to your members and potential future supporters, members and followers? What kind of reaction would this bring out from any corporate or major donors? How would this affect your online presence overall?

And finally a great place to to find your answers from the staff members themselves:
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/82810/#reply526609
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/71783/#reply446467
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/82810/#reply526679
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/82810/#reply527732

To find more simply search Flickr’s own forums here:
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/

The one slight bright light in the tunnel is that Flickr has teamed with TechSoup to offer premium accounts to qualified non-profits. Now the downside I see to this is that it is not giving you a single place to upload the files and organize them and also you have to assign the account to a member of your staff. If that member stays the account goes with them and everything on it goes with them.

They are still encouraged not to use the name of the organization in their user name or any part of their account, and if anyone else posts to the account you are still in jeopardy of having your account closed.

You can read more about this initiative here.

Final Analysis:
Using Flickr for your groups is not a good idea. You run the risk of having your account deleted because it is for a group in some cases even if you are using their agreed packages with TechSoup. You also run the risk of being removed due to false claims by other members without so much as a simple question of proof. I do not see it as worth the risk to rely on Flickr in any way to share photos or events, instead I would spend more time hosting the images locally on your own server to display on your site as well as using additional more non-profit friendly tools such as Facebook and Twitter to share those photos and get the message out there.