Looking for a New Photo Sharing Tool
Life • October 4th, 2006If you’ve been reading this site lately, you may have noticed that I’ve been recently consumed by the topic of copyright protection. Now that I have embarked on a personal project to share our wedding photos with friends and family via the Internet, these two topics are quickly coming together and spinning at rapid velocity in my mind. I am a paid user, and huge fan of Flickr, but so are millions of people: including developers with good intentions, and plagiarists with evil minds. I’ve observed some recent events and trends on the web, and have given some thought to this whole issue, finally deciding to embark yet on one more project. That is: finding or crafting a new system for sharing my personal photos, so that I can keep the control I want, but still share my family’s images with those I trust, providing all the functionality I’ve come to love from Flickr.
What I Love About Flickr
I’ve known about Flickr for quite some time. Yet, it took me a long time to bite the bullet and start uploading my personal photos to their site. As you may guess, my main concern was the risk of having my public photos stolen by anybody browsing the site.
But one day, I searched Flickr for the word “uniandes”, my beautiful and dear university. And the search returned photos from a current student who had captured beautiful images that surprised me. Suddenly I was able to see what my beloved alma mater looks like now. I loved it! I was so excited and moved by having been able to see these images because somebody across the ocean had been gutsy enough to upload them for the world to see, that I decided to join this fabulous community, and not only did I start uploading photos: I also opened my wallet and paid Flickr for a professional membership.
Since then, I’ve sort of fought an uphill battle trying to get my friends and family to use the site. Most of them remain at bay. They’ll come to see my photos if I announce that I’ve posted new photos, but they won’t sign up for an account to comment or participate. They won’t subscribe to the feed, and probably have not even bookmarked the site. People who I consider “decent” Internet users obviously have had some difficulty understanding Flickr’s navigation, or finding info. I agree that it takes a little while to understand how Flickr works, and all the little things it offers. I was patient enough to explore it, and have come to enjoy the following things about sharing my photos there:
Comments
I love it when somebody stumbles upon one of my photos and either sends me a comment, or marks the photo as a favorite. Those relatives that have embraced Flickr also comment on them, and I love the discussion. The photos open a new window of communication with loved-ones, or strangers. It’s always fun to see photos with others and talk about them.
Tagging
I love my local iPhoto application, but adding keywords to each photo for cataloging and searching purposes has never been easier than adding tags in Flickr. I give each photo as many tags as I want to, always able to see which tags I have already used, and then I can easily find photos, or share them according to the tags assigned.
Dynamic generation of thumbnails
I upload photos as they come out of my camera, and Flickr gives me six different size versions of the same photo that I can use anywhere I want. Specifically, I love being able to link from my blog to thumbnails of my photos on Flickr. People can see the small image on my post, and click on it to see a larger version, and maybe comment on it. Flickr hosts all these images for me, saving space on my web host package.
Flickr badges
This site’s “Photos” page uses several badges to present random photos in a controlled way: One badge pulls the four latest public images I’ve uploaded to Flickr. Another one, pulls four random photos among my set of all-time favorites. The page also displays one random photo of Joey, one of my family, one of Joey’s family, and one of my friends. So I get variety of photos, but I get to decide which kinds of photos I want there with great flexibility. Again, Flickr hosts the images for me, creates the thumbnails, and links to larger versions of each photo.
Privacy settings
Most of my photos are currently public. But I also have a few that are only available to friends and family. As long as they are logged in, they can see them. And whether photos are public or private, my fiends and family can also download the hi-res versions of the ones they like. Forget about emailing huge photo attachments in batches with email servers refusing them, and all that pain. If my aunt wants to print a photo, she can get it herself, or order it and have it mailed to her home.
What’s Bad About Flickr
All the little things that concern me about Flickr center around the ease for others to use my photos intentionally or not, without my permission:
Flickr’s copyright notices
Although Flickr allows you to set copyright permissions for each photo, I find that many people may not realize that “public” photos can also be copyrighted. I believe, the placement, size, and general treatment of copyright notices on Flickr is very faint and easy to be overlooked and/or misunderstood:
Photo thumbnails have a tiny notice that reads “© This photo is public” (public emphasized, and a green-light icon decorates the statement). Now, I understand what this means. That is, the photo is available for public view, but I am sure that people who don’t know much about copyright (i.e. most people, including me before getting into web design) will read this as “public, up for grabs, do whatever you want with it, green light: go”. If the photo is public, then people can see it. So: Why state the obvious and say that the photo is public? Why not say instead: “This photo may not be used or copied without the owner’s permission”?
Inside photo pages, the copyright notice does read “All rights reserved”. However, it is placed on a spot I’m not sure many people will notice. Again: a few us understand copyright language, but the average person has no clue of what “all rights reserved” may mean. A little explanation by the copyright notice could help.
Free Access to Photos Database
Flickr allows developers to use their database of public photos to create third-party applications displaying such photos in other web sites or outlets. Although you can opt-out of this, there are still other ways for anybody to tap into your public photos and do whatever they want with them. I’m talking about RSS feeds.
Now don’t get me wrong: I love RSS feeds, and as soon as I get a hold of my parents’ computer, I intend to put my photos feed there, so they can always know when I’ve posted photos. I also love it if any strangers are subscribed to my photos feed. But then, the problem is that anybody in the world can also scrap my feed and do whatever they want with my photos. This is not a photos-only issue. It’s happening with everything else distributed via RSS. Isn’t it time that application providers offer the ability to authenticate feeds? With the rapidly increasing trend of feed plagiarism/aggregation, I would feel a lot more comfortable if only my Flickr contacts, or those to whom I give a password can subscribe to my feed.
With Flickr’s huge success, a lot of applications are starting to pop, offering users the ability to tap into public Flickr feeds, and display such photos anywhere. These applications may have all the good intentions in the world. However, I don’t really want my photos there. One, because not all developers are aware of copyright restrictions, and even though many are, and use only public photos released under a Creative Commons license, a bulk of them probably just don’t know.
Two, I have no control over how the developer presents/uses my photos in his/her application, and who knows how many plugins and apps may be distributing my photos who knows how, with who knows what information, so users of these applications will probably have no clue where the photo comes from, and will certainly not know that it’s not ok to do stuff with it, or sell it, or anything else.
I know… Anybody can steal photos from my own web site, or my Flickr page, but I prefer not to have my photos distributed in other unauthorized outlets. Unauthenticated RSS feeds make it impossible for me to keep such control. And idiots: please don’t tell me: “Then you shouldn’t post photos to the Internet”. That is not how things should be. With stupid logic like that, then I should never leave my house, should never drive, should never eat fish, or show any artwork to anybody, or write… The fact that I’m posting something for public view doesn’t mean it’s up for grabs. Doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t behave ethically and enjoy what I have to share without stealing it, YES: stealing it from me.
Flickr is awesome. But that same awesomeness has made it extremely dangerous — for me. People are starting to recognize its success and talk about it like a new “source for free photos”. Although this is partly true: You can find some photos there that are released for public use, Flickr should not be seen blindly as a stock photo web site. That is certainly NOT how I see it. It’s not the intention I have when I post my photos there, but unfortunately this message is not widely understood… And I can’t keep explaining it to everybody, and I can’t keep up with what people are doing to use it to its fullest potential. I think it’s great that all of this is happening, and that Flickr is enjoying the huge success it has, but it is also clear to me, that the way it’s going, I no longer feel comfortable posting my photos there… Not all of them.
The Quest for a New Photo Sharing Tool
This is what I would love, and even pay for:
- Flickr’s functionality; at least: photo gallery presentation, comments, tagging, automatic thumbnail generation, easy uploading, and multiple albums/sets.
- Customizable templates. I’m a designer. I want my photos to be presented how I want them. If I can customize my blog, I want also to customize my photo gallery.
- Privacy settings: I want public thumbnails and private photos. Flickr’s privacy settings work, except I’d like the size of the publicly available version to be smaller… Something thieves won’t be able to use on the web, with log-in required to see the larger version. So, if you’re a trusted person, you’ll have access to my photos, and all this will be completely transparent to you. But if you’re a stranger, you’ll still get to see at least thumbnails of my photos. I could make the whole gallery private, but I would still like to be able to link to public thumbnails from my blog, like I do today.
- Authenticated RSS feeds… or not: If all that gets distributed through the feed is a thumbnail image.
I intend to look into photoblog or photo gallery plugins for WordPress. Clearly: Sharing photos with blog software would give me comments, archiving, customization of content and design, RSS feeds, some privacy settings, and easy management of logins and passwords. The issue remaining is finding the tools that would allow me to control photo privacy the way I want to. I’ll also need an easy to use way of uploading photos. I may not get all the AJAX coolness and “interestingness” stats of Flickr, but at this point I’m simply looking for a basic customizable platform that allows me to keep a little more control. Any random souls stumbling here that may have suggestions, please let me know.
