Update: Boing Boing has taken notice.
Update2: Clarification added below.
I noticed a while ago that when I searched for photos using tags on flickr, that my photos weren’t showing. After checking through the Flickr faqs I discovered that this is because I have been marked as ‘NIPSA’ [Not in Public Site Areas] which means that my account is more or less hidden to people searching flickr for photos. I emailed Flickr support asking why, and was told it was because i’d been uploadng my drawings:
Flickr is a photo-sharing website, so uploading non-photos will flag your account as NIPSA.
IMHO, this sucks. I understand that Flickr was developed as a photo sharing website, but I don’t think the content should be restricted to that now that it has evolved into a massive community based image library. There’s much more heart and soul [and dare I say, artistic merit] in my drawings than any of my half assed happy snaps.
Clarification:
It seems that this has sparked a bit of an interweb storm in a teacup.
On one side are the photographers [and flickr] who say that flickr is and should remain for photos only, and that us dirty illustrators should bugger off to Deviantart. On the other side, are people like me, who think that flickr is being overly restrictive and should evolve to suit it’s user’s needs.
First off, let me say that I <3 flickr. If flickr was a girl, I’d marry her. I’ve spent more time on flickr than any other intarwebsite since I signed up a year ago. I work on the internets, so I can really appreciate the top notch service that they provide. I respect their attitude towards their customers and have been surprised by their generosity at every turn. However, this whole thing just seems very unflickrish. I really expected them to be more open minded. To blanket ban my entire photostream seems rather unfair.
My name is Aaron Booth and I am a huge nerd. I am currently stationed in Sydney, Australia.
I totally agree with you there…
Is there a petition to sign?
While I don’t think flickr is for art, I do think that it’s totally crappy of them to chuck a blanket over your entire site, just because of the art, especially when you have tons of more-than-legitimate photos on there, all the while flickr allows people to upload any old found-porn and call them photos. Worse still, I bet if you took yr art off to satisfy them, you wouldn’t lose their lame flag.
Killing a gnat with a sentry gun or whatever – I think it sucks, especially since you paid too. Write the fuckers a letter.
Well, no, I agree with them. If people want to see photos with a common tag, they shouldn’t have to go through all forms of media to find some. Although if Flicker implemented some filters in their queries, then that should keep a lot more people happy. But it seems they want to keep strictly the photos only vibe.
Besides, I’d be kinda freaked having my photos available to anyone who just wanted to query a broad tag.
You can make your photos private [or only visible to yr contacts] if you choose to.
I’m mostly just surprised at the blanket ban, given the amount of art based groups on flickr.
If the drawing is digital, print it out and take a picture of it. if it’s hand drawn on paper, take a picture of it and upload that.
It’s a picture of a drawing… that’s not against their rules.
That’s such a wierd schizoid behaviour:
Here’s a creative tool! Use it! Go, be creative! Have Fun!
…
Whups! Not that creative! Back in the box, Boyo!
I wonder if this all came about pre or post yahoo buy out? Anyway, it’s crap.
What is a photo? Is a scanned drawing not a photo? Doesn’t the scanner take a photograph of the drawing?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beejjorgensen/sets/894766/
Not the first to have this happen to you. That being said…the difference between what you think flickr is and what flickr thinks it is does not make them fascists. Lighten up, Francis…
Why don’t you just take some nice photos of the drawings? They can’t say anything then…
Just take a ‘photo’ of your drawing
Can you just take a photo of your drawing?
I just got NIPSAd as well. I’m with you, it sucks. I don’t understand why they’re enforcing this policy, and they haven’t published their definition of a “photo”, or really any criteria for this policy other than the ambiguous word “photo”. I’ve asked if I can take snapshots of my monitor when my art happens to be displayed on it, they haven’t replied yet, but I’ll let you know what they say.
Can’t you just take a photo of your drawing and upload that?
Yeah it’s very lame. I’d rather see kick ass art anyway than someone’s crappy family photos. Some people should really use the ‘view by family only’ feature more often.
The other thing that pisses me off with Flickr is when a kick ass photographer decides to not put up their EXIF data. It’s not that they don’t know how either, it’s the one’s that do but refuse to. What, so they don’t want to give away their secrets? Meh! Most likely they’ve got a kick ass studio to work with anyway, studio lights or multiple flash slave units, reflectors, umbrellas, etc… and that’s got nothing to do with the EXIF.
I got an idea. Snap a picture of your drawings, voila! Problem solved. Use something really bad too like a cell phone cam and take the picture of your monitor. And if that doesn’t work, take a portrait of someone with your drawings so blatantly in the fore or background. That’s just a lame policy.
I signed up for flickr mostly because of the hobo project. Since I signed up I spend more time on flickr, which you think they’d want. Isn’t that essentially the web business model? Get eyeballs, keep eyeballs? Banning illustrations (and illustrators) is narrowminded and short-sighted. I’m blaming yahoo. And guess what? They won’t be getting a pro subscription from me until they pull their heads out.
p.s. For all you smartie-pants who say “take a photo of your art, problem solved” that is how i uploaded mine. Nipsa’d anyway.
Come on, it says in the title that it’s a photo sharing site. Really, drawings and whatnot should go on Deviantart or something.
Erm, I forgot to add that I think it’s nice they’re letting you keep your content up there instead of just deleting it like other sites would. I also feel that maybe there should be a flickr spinoff for other art as well, just to keep you lot happy.
Hmmm. So a photo of a drawing’s no good… How about if you drew it on a wall and took a photo? Wait, no, they prolly wouldn’t like that either. But what if someone else drew it and you just happened upon it one afternoon? I guess photos of grafitti are not acceptable either. Or murals. or sculpture. or architecture.
Just post a picture of your cat. (do you yahoo? I don’t.)
I have been in the middle of a similar situation and have found that Flickr is actually quite accomodating. While my stuff has been NIPSA’d, it hasn’t been outright deleted, which I appreciate. I can still post in a public group which I’ve created for the 700hoboes project, which seems to be a reasonable alternative, even if it is a tad more difficult to find than the general flow.
That said, there are tons and tons of illustrators and graphic designers who post work there without reprisal. Hopefully as Flickr continues to grow (it is only the beta version after all), they will open their arms wider to other creative folk.
You lot? Ashley- why, exactly, should photographs of drawings not be posted to flickr? What, exactly, is a “photo”? Flickr hasn’t bothered to state the policy clearly in any way before enforcing it. Hey Deviantart is cool, but it’s not as large as flickr, and has few of the neat networking and searching features flickr does. Besides that, I didn’t know about Deviantart. I’ve been posting art “photos” to flickr for a year, and only now have they decided to make me a second class flickr citizen. I’m posting regular “photos” too, but those aren’t visible to the public either. You’ll get your due when they NIPSA you too.
I’m actually annoyed that they let me keep my art photos up, and I think it makes this problem worse by being more ambiguous. I would much rather that they be completely up front about how they feel about art and experimentation and anything that doesn’t fit in their narrow minded box.
Maybe this is just a little payback from some grumpy old photographers to artists… Historically speaking photography is a brand new art form, and has not gained full acceptance in the art world yet. Drawing on the other hand, especially good drawing, has been revered for millenia. Me thinks this policy is flickr’s chickensh*t way of reacting to the threat of “real” art.
It could be argued that once a photo which has been worked on with photoshop it ceases to be a photo and becomes more like a drawing.
Then you can argue that all doctored photos should be banned from Flickr.
I agree with the “picture of art” idea. There is nothing they could do as long as you claimed that it is what you did.. Taking picutres of other people’s art and calling it your own is an art form… so why can’t you take a picture of art and call it a photo?
This has come about because flickr (et al) have an artwork-based service in the works, and don’t want people investing their work in flickr only to have to move it over in a few months.
Check the file size of your artwork. No human can go through checking what’s photo and what’s not. If it’s a drawing it’s probably got a larger file or dimensions size that causes the computer to flag it. That is the artwork doesn’t match a photo croping ratio.
Or the system looks for the data that digital cameras usually dump onto photos. That would mean that scanned photos raise a flag that sends a human checking.
I guess their reason for putting art NIPSA is to ensure the true artist copyright is protected?
As most people (including the author of this blog) pay for their usage of Flickr, I think the consumer is completely within their right to question Flickr on their ambiguous rules and usage.
You’ve really worried me now, bcause pretty much everything in my Flickr account is drawings and graphic design project scans, as a preliminary portfolio type thing. And they are only on Flickr because it was easier and quicker to upload them and send the link to people, instead of sending them lots of separate picture files.
I’m not tech enough to make my own website yet, so a graphic design portfolio (which is what i need to make) is not a viable option at the moment.
Will my portfolio become blocked??? (I’m quite new to Flickr so don’t know what protocols there are TBH)
totally illogical anticreative policy coupled with the promise of a channel for boundless creativity. what else do you expect from a site straight from the loins of the self-important hipsters at boingboing? luckily for you and other artists, they’ll do what they can to amend it to keep their reputation in the ipod-toting scenester community lemony fresh, while still selling whatever they can to yahoo.
Gods, Flickr got stupid with the move to Yahoo.
This has come about because flickr (et al) have an artwork-based service in the works, and don’t want people investing their work in flickr only to have to move it over in a few months.
Is this true? It would make me less annoyed if so, and I would hope the new service is just as good, and closely related in a social sense. But even still, WTF? Why would they go to the trouble of punishing people? Why wouldn’t they send an email to each artist, or post a faq point or something, explaining this? I have a hard time seeing this info and flickr’s behaviour correlating.
BTW, Alex, I’m pretty sure it is humans that are enforcing the NIPSA policy, both flickr staff and “vigilant users” via the “may offend” button. And they’re not going through every photo, they’re just applying a blanket ban to an account, if that account has too many non-”photos”, whatever that means.
I also opened a flickr account just for 700hoboes. So this is why my drawing never appeared on the public tag…
Really, its their service and they can do what they want (to non-apying customers like me), but this is just stupid.
Maybe it’s time for a Flickr for animation? All we need it a few posts to the Lazyweb, a little reverse-engineering, and site is born.
And later someone to make a business plan and get millions in expansion funding and get aquired by Yahoo and set up terms that refuse photos…
I was completely unaware of this issue until this evening. How do I know if I’ve been NIPSA’d?
My work crosses lots of these boundaries. I guess most would count as photos under any definition. Some images are worked in software (I’ve been doing clones, collages and tiled images lately) and I guess they’re okay too as they’re built from photographic elements. I’ve also been scanning artwork (mainly collages, printed media and the individual items that might get used in a digital collage later) and I guess this wouldn’t be okay by Flickr, if I understand the above discussion correctly. Confusing and unexpected I must say! I’ve been on Flickr since July and have a pro account.
Ultimately, I use Flickr because it allows me to store and organise my images and so I don’t really care who’s looking at it (no one would be fine). I also use it to collaborate with other artists, but the images aren’t public during the working process anyway. So strangely, in a way I don’t care, but it does seem an odd policy and it is certainly a shame.
If it’s true that all this is because an art sharing application is coming, then great. But I’d be willing to move my stuff over when it’s available anyway, if it’s better in some way.
I agree with you, that Flickr is wrong to edit for anything other than objectionable sexual or violent content. Kill them all. Kill them all.
Oh, I mean fuck them all. Fuck them all.
Here’s my understanding: all NIPSA means is that your tagged photos will not show up when someone does a general search for a tag. Say you have a picture of your cat mittens and have tagged it “mittens”. Instead of being available to any and everyone one who searches that tag, they will only be able to view it on your account specifically. It’ll still be public within the confines of your own photostream (unless you yourself have marked it private), which you can still easily refer people to.
Correct me if I am wrong.
I just had a look in Flickr’s Support Forums in order to see what the latest fights were about. So, it’s the drawings issue again… it’s not new. It’s been brought up hundreds of times. And yes, you’ll have to make snapshots of your drawings in order to make them officially photographs. So yes, this is completely ridiculous.
At one point, I even tried to point out by means of illustrations why no sensible person can draw a line ever at all. here’s the post: http://www.flickr.com/forums/help/12823/
to no avail – it lead to the same amount of bitching and autistic, unfriendly remarks by staff members (okay, by heather) as any other post does that displays some form of criticism.
apart from that, they’re actually taking people’s pictures out of public areas without notifying those people. they’re just self centered idiots, unfortunately.
apart from that, flickr is a great site. as long as you stay out of the support forums and make sure that you use a digital camera to get your drawings on screen.
So, next you can get in touch with Microsoft because you can’t draw pictures in Word, right?
Flickr does what it says it will do – it’s a *photo* sharing site.
Just because you want something different, it doesn’t mean they should change it for you.
Actually, while I think about it, I’m now a user of this site.
Change it so I can search for and download MP3’s.
> Ashley- why, exactly, should photographs of drawings not be posted to flickr?
Taking a picture of something you’ve drawn probably isn’t the best example of “photography.” I do understand how you feel about the issue, but still think Flickr is a site primarily celebrating photography. If you’re taking a snap of something the admins don’t want posted, it’s really just taking advantage of a technicality.
If it’s a photo of you holding up a painting or something, that’s another matter. Maybe it’s about presentation. I dunno. I hereby butt out.
Maybe they are getting kickbacks from the camera manufacturers for providing statistics on what cameras are being used, and are kicking out those images that do not have digital camera or phone cam metadata, although I would think a lot of that is edited out anyway before it is uploaded, if people are photoshopping their stuff in any fashion. That could be explained by a robot flagging files.
Otherwise, they may be getting gripey for having the images linked indirectly to feed some high traffic blog, which pulls in the human editors, and whatever criteria they get uptight about.
In any event, the demographic they are probably pushing to the money people are casual snapshotters, especially those that might upload directly from a camera phone; not portfolio services meticulously creative craftsmen.
I’m not sure how a picture of a drawing changes anything. They have to be “nipsa”ed by eye anyway, so I doubt a technicality will do anything. Since photo or drawing, its all digital files by the time they get to flickr, it becomes a philosophical issue with flickr regardless. I have nothing but drawings on my flickr page, and just some random tag searches for “drawing”, “sketch”, etc bring them and dozens of other illustrations up. I know this is a constant us vs them thing on flickr, but it that’s the eula, I’m happy to use the site for what I can use it for. it is free, after all.
I think Flickr sucks too. I wasted the money on a Pro account and invited a bunch of people. I wish I had not bothered.
I just now realized that I’ve been NIPSA-ed as well…mostly for original artwork, though there are plenty of photos in my photostream. The whole thing’s left a bad taste in my mouth, and I won’t be renewing my pro account when it expires.
We can argue for years about what a photo is or not. There’s always gonna be different thoughts about that. Still Flickr allows people to upload image files, which can be of everything. And of course designers and artists are using it to post their works. Flickr’s choice: make them happy or disappoint them. This kind of issue is one which makes artists pissed….and they can’t complain.
Now. Maybe someone should do a community specific for art and illustration. It would be great if it would embrace differences instead of creating them (what the hell. It’s narrow mindness which makes the world the mess we are in). Deviant Art? It takes forever to post a single piece because you have to put it in the right directory. I didn’t like it right away. Time for something new?
I was put on NIPSA status over a year ago… it corresponded with me posting this “illustration” straight after the london underground bombings
I was also hassled by the london underground authrority for using their trademark logo… but was suddenly aware my imaghes were not showing up on flickr… I wrote to them and the they sent the same reply as above… I also got lots of hate posts on my blog… plus a hacker or two that kept defacingand killing my blog template….. If my mememory is correct this was before Yahoo were involved
Anyway I decided bugger them amd now I mainly just post sketched on flickr…. but i not longer pay for a pro account.!
I like flickr and it has helped me get images into my blog, if that means being NIPSA I can live with that. Whay should I bother competting on the photo searchg with all those that just rip of pictures from other web site and post them as their own
Flickr’s customer service absolutely sucks. That is the truth.
Well, can I just say-there are SEVERAL long threads on my FLICKR site about this debate, some have a graph-flickr has just attempted to rollout a shit filtering (censorship) system-
you are not alone-
we are still helping people adjust their settings-THEY HAVE SWITCHED ME FROM UNSAFE TO MODERATE 4 TIMES WITHOUT EXPLPAINING WHY-NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE DOING
We are doing flickrs work!!
Best of luck-
Gail orenstein
Hello! great idea of color of this siyte!
Flickr sucks.
They delete PRO account at the whim of staff members.
Please don’t create PRO account on flickr, you can be deleted the next day and not given a word for reason.
I just deleted my account with Flickr because they censored my protest-art (you can see it on my blog). They claimed I was harassing and abusing other members by having it posted.
My protest-art has the words “Summertownsun sucks”. I put this artwork up in protest of Summertownsun complaining that i was infringing on their copyrighted work. They said I was posting images that they own. So flickr removed the images. But the images are actually in the public domain. So I protested Summertownsun’s actions by creating a piece of artwork and posting it on Flickr.
Then Flickr, in all its controlling, tightwad glory, removed that image too, and sent me an email which said, ”
Hello, dazzlecat! Hi dazzlecat, In joining Flickr, you agreed to abide by the Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. Specifically, you must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Flickr members: http://flickr.com/guidelines.gne . We’ve removed the content, “SummertownSun Publishing Sucks!”, from your photostream. Please note that similar activity may result in the termination of your account without warning. Regards, Omar ”
So what really happened here? The simple fact is that Flickr censored my artwork!!!
I sent out an email to all my contacts on Flickr letting them know I was deleting my account and why. Now I’m going to have to make another piece of protest-art called Flickr Sucks!
Someone here mentioning drawings and all that crap. This is no different than when someone says a photographer is not an artist. It doesn’t matter if you have a drawing or a photograph, unless it’s copyright infringement, they should mess with what you post. The biggest BS thing I have with flickr is that I loved it, but now that you “have” to have a Yahoo account, I closed my account and refuse to give them the time of day, not even to browse someone else’s work.
Yahoo is to the internet, what Microsoft is to computers… Bloat.
they shouldn’t* mess with what you post.
Sorry, typo