Flickr is a great tool and very popular, but I have never used a single flickr image on any of my blogs. Why not?
I have read that many stories about flickr images being used on blogs and I wouldn’t think of using a single image. Today I stumbled upon David’s apology after the storm (created by ONE commenter).

Surely, most of time (flickr) photographers are happy with a link back, many of them will agree when you ask them to use their pictures, but then again if you dare to use the Fair Use policy suddenly you might be confronted with a whole gang of haters.
Is a small error worth the controversy it might result in? Not if you ask me.

Don’t understand me wrong : I respect licenses and copyrights (and will add this one more as disclaimer, just to make sure you got it), but sometimes people just are too shallow as far as I am concerned. And most of time it is not the photographer, but the friend/fan of the image rights owner.
I am sure many photographers are realistic in life and accept that online other habits live.

We have scrapers, grabbers, splogs, image hotlinking and many more of the same.
Do I personally care? No, not really. The people who don’t respect licenses or intellectual property will lose one day or the other anyway.
I do believe in Karma.
Scrape my content, try to make money with, grab my feed, use my images. This is the internet and I know that it will happen sooner or later. Even without me knowing. It just happens. There are many examples of this and it is sad that it happens, but I would never start a vendetta against those poor people. But I digress.

Back to flickr. No matter if you link back, credit the photo or rely on Fair Use, sooner or later D’Artagnan, or was it Don Quichote, will show up and create a whole drama in your comments.

You are such a bad boy!
You used an image without credit!

Imagine the photographer suddenly decides to change the license into “no rights”.
There you are : without knowing it you host illegal content on your site and (depending on the country where your website is hosted/server is located) your hoster might have to suspend your account on a simple DMCA complaint. One email and bingo!.
Er, *poof*. Gone is your blog.
I think I’d rather use an image of a respected photo agency. At least they will first send you a Cease & Desist notice (most of time).
No public scandal.

Or I visit stock.xchng where the image owner specifically uploads pictures to be shared. And specifies if you can use them freely or first need to request permission.
Heck I’d even rather go to Google Images than flickr.

Seriously people, if you are scared that someone might forget to link back or credit you, don’t share. Upload your pictures at iStockphoto and hope they are that great people will pay for.
Get real, probably your pictures have already been shared on torrents sites.

Disclaimer
I do respect and believe in intellectual property. But I am a realist.

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