Thursday, June 05, 2008

Well, Pinch my Flickr!

How interesting.

On May 28th, I received this notice concerning my Flickr account

From: Flickr Customer Care

Subject: Flickr Terms of Service

Hello, stevenwarran!

This is an automatically generated copy of a warning we sent to your primary email address:

-------------------------
Hi stevenwarran,

Please read the Flickr Community Guidelines concerning
uploading images to your photostream that were not taken by
you.

http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne

# Don’t upload anything that isn't yours.
This includes other people's photographs and/or stuff that
you've collected from around the Internet. Accounts that
consist primarily of such collections may be terminated at
any time.

You need to delete from your photostream all content not
taken by you immediately or your Flickr account will be
deactivated.

-Terrence

-------------------------
If you'd like to respond to this warning, please send the email to case762561@support.flickr.com to ensure a timely response.

You can change your primary email address at any time via your account page: http://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/email/



How sad, I thought. I wish I had read the terms of service. Apparently, some of my web collecting raised hackles somewhere. I became resigned to the loss of all that delicious commentary I utilized Flickr for (the images themselves were all safely downloaded in duplicate on my hard drive and elsewhere.

But so far, nothing seemed to be amiss. That is, until my dear friend Pinch visited me, and I backtracked into a link he posts on his page directed to my Flickr account concerning the following picture.



There we find a deletion has occurred.

The photo you were looking for has been deleted. You might like to ask stevenwarran about it! Here's a link back to your home page


Flickr hasn't sent me any notice about this deletion, so I have to thank Pinch and Company for pointing it out to me.

(Screw Flickr: They gone and deleted my account of over 3000 pictures. Flickr Has Earned My Undying Enmity.)

Now if Pinch had been really smart I don't think he would have drawn all this attention to this particular photograph. He could have simply approached me as a gentleman and said, "You know what Steven? You are right and that photograph is actionable and the U.S. government would kindly like your cooperation in taking down the image, before any of the 12 people who visit your blog recognize and exploit the leak, as it does compromise national security, in a fashion.

It is obvious how the mistake was made even. That photograph was released by the Directorate of Mighty Flying Pingas, without adequate consultation with the Directorate of Secret Buried Installations, and you can understand how sometimes inter-Directorate communication can be a problem.

So yin and yang. I suppose it's all water under the bridge now.

8 comments:

  1. LOL....Stevie boy! As much as I would love to be the source of the Flickr screwing-with-you, I cannot claim such an honor. You screwed this one up all by your lonesome, pal! Perhaps you should stick to your own photos to misinterpret instead of posting other people's copyrighted images? Just a suggestion.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh...not only other people's copyrighted images, but when you take someone else's photo and fuck it up so bad by seeing boogymen in every cloverleaf and buried missile silos in every exit ramp, some people might take exception to that and get Flickr to take down the photo that you stole. "Fair Use" has the word "fair" in it for a reason - taking someone else's property and "using" it to fabricate a negative impression could bother some people.

    I'm just sayin'.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well, you are the early bird, aren't you Pinch! How does the worm taste?

    What this imbroglio proves is that for the trillions upon trillions upon trillions of dollars we spend on the military, not only can they not protect the heart of our greatest city, nor their own headquarters even, they can screw up a cheap sensationalist public relations effort like this image of a F-16 CJ Fighting Falcon from the 20th Fighter Wing, Shaw Air Force Base, S.C. Too bad it couldn't fly over the Pentagon during a mission for the North American Aerospace Defense Command on September 11, 2001!

    My personal, subjective interpretation of what I think I see in a public domain photograph, officially "released" by a branch of the U.S. government, which I pay for with my tax dollars, is my business, unless and until you decide to make it your business too. My opinion is either worthless, as lacking in truth, or of some value, as perhaps carrying a truthful analysis. Your response tells me I was right, not wrong about the image. Do we need to get a psychologist here?

    Like my father used to say: the military could screw up a two-car funeral.

    So what's it going to be Pinch--"other people's copyrighted images," or an officially released, publicly sourced, mucked-up propaganda shot?

    ReplyDelete
  4. P.S. The gentleman's agreement offer still stands Pinch, and that doesn't mean you'd have to admit I was right and you were wrong.

    Ask me to take the photograph and commentary down and I will--no questions asked. Until then, I must conclude I WAS right.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. You can conclude you are right all day long, Stevie-boy - doesn't bother me. I've found in the years of occasional digital debating with you moonbats that it matters little to none what the facts are - you will still cling, like the proverbial booger on your fingertip, to the wacked out theories you come up with. Case in point is the "buried missile silos" or whatever you call them in the cloverleaf of route 27 and the "howitzers that turned around and fired at the Pentagon". The Loose Change boys do it, that absolute proven moronic idiot Balsamo over at P4T does it, the CIT boys are King of the Fingertip Booger!

    Knock yourself out, bud! You are in fine company!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oh horrors! I don't even rank in the fingertip-booger hit parade! Reborn again into another lifetime as Queen Nefertiti's handmaiden, flicking my/her puny under-mattress scrapings!

    But I don't like the LC, CIT, Balsamo guys either, Pinch. I like you! What's up with that?!?!?! Might you make an official-version Marine out of my raw mensch conspiracy-theory material?

    So, at least I know I am wrong about the buried defenses in the cloverleaf at the Pentagon, (that's the thing about theories, you can be wrong without any shame,) and I haven't done any damage to my country. So lets just keep bringing it up, again and again, about how wrong I am, on a steady basis. It's fun to be wrong! How's it feel to be right all the time Pinch?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Why do I feel such a tingle when Pinch calls me stevie-boy?

    I think I need to be taken in hand ASAP!

    ReplyDelete