New Flickr Rules Won’t Affect Archives of Non-Profit Groups

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Flickr’s new rules and 1000 photo limit for free accounts came as a surprise when it was announced last week.

Image via Flickr.

And also as somewhat of a shock, especially for those of us who rely upon Flickr.

One of the best things about the website is its vast photo archive.

The rule changes seemed to threaten this.

Among the organizations that host images on Flickr is Creative Commons, the group that archives royalty free imagery for use by creatives.

The CEO of Creative Commons, Ryan Merkley, wrote in a blog post: “Many users are concerned such a limit on free account capacity might cause millions of CC images to be deleted from the Commons. A lot of people have reached out to us directly and asked what we can do. I’m confident that together we can find solutions, if we assume goodwill and bring our collective creativity to the problem. I have confidence in Don and Ben and the SmugMug and Flickr teams: they want to do right for the Commons, and they understand how deeply CC and the photo Commons is integrated into the goodwill that Flickr has retained over all these years.”

According to DPReview, other groups that will be spared from the 1000 photo limit include NASA, The Smithsonian, The National Archives UK, and The British Library.

Dan MacAskill, co-founder and CEO of SmugMug, confirmed that non-profit organizations will be exempted from the 1000 photo limit and talked about plans to integrate those organizations into the new framework.

In a statement on the Flickr blog, MacAskill wrote: “Whatever changes come in the years going forward, the importance of these photos will always matter to us. We not only want to preserve the photos we have, we want to keep partnering with organizations such as libraries, museums, and government agencies to contribute to The Flickr Commons as well. And we will continue to work hard to keep these photos safe and available for the world to view and enjoy.”

Change is never easy, and Flickr’s announced changes didn’t go over that well on the Internet. The biggest concern a lot of people have concerns images on Flickr that are used by websites across the web. Depending on how it works out, a lot of users could find many broken images on their websites in 2019.

About Author

Kehl is our staff photography news writer since 2017 and has over a decade of experience in online media and publishing and you can get to know him better here and follow him on Insta.

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