Does Flickr Own Your Photos?

Millions of users upload photos to sites like Flickr, along with other social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. Content creation is easier than ever before, but copyright issues can get murky when it comes to who owns what after uploading content to certain platforms. Many photo-sharing platform users are wondering: Once you’ve uploaded, does Flickr own your photos?

What is Flickr?

Flickr is a popular photo and video-sharing website, created in 2004 by Ludicorp, and now owned by SmugMug as of April 2018. According to The Verge, tens of millions of people are registered on Flickr, and millions of photos are uploaded daily.

Flickr’s website describes itself as “almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world.”

Does Flickr Own Your Photos?

So once you “share” your personal content on this popular platform, does Flickr own your photos?

According to Flickr’s terms and conditions page, even after uploading photos to the site, the user retains all intellectual property rights to their content, including the copyright on their photos and videos.

Opening a new Flickr account will default to the user having “All Rights Reserved.” This means that any photos you upload cannot be copied and used for other purposes without your explicit permission.

You can, however, set your preferences so that some or all of your Flickr photos can be used by anyone. If you keep your photos as “All Rights Reserved,” anyone who wanted to use your photo would be legally required to contact you and seek your permission for the use of the photo, which you can choose to grant or deny.

Does Flickr Involve Facial Recognition?

Flickr says that it uses an image recognition algorithm to suggest possible photo tags for its users. This is based on image patterns rather than a specific facial recognition program, according to its website.

However, at least 700,000 images on Flickr have been downloaded to a giant facial recognition database called MegaFace, which dozens of companies employ for their own use in facial recognition algorithms, the New York Times has reported.

Facial recognition technology is used to identify individuals based on photos of their faces, and can then be used for surveillance purposes. One of the main concerns about this technology is how easy it is for it to be implemented without the knowledge or permission of the surveilled party—indeed, MegaFace allegedly obtained these hundreds of thousands of images from Flickr without the permission of the users who uploaded them in the first place.

Currently, federal law does not substantially protect Americans from facial recognition technology, though certain individual states have created laws regarding their biometric information, such as the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2008. While federal law doesn’t regulate facial recognition technology, children 13 years old and younger are protected by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

If you uploaded images onto your Flickr account, you may be able to join this Flickr facial recognition class action lawsuit investigation.

Join a Free Flickr Facial Recognition Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

If you had a Flickr account and you uploaded pictures onto that account, those images may have been given to MegaFace and used for facial recognition purposes without your permission, and you may qualify to join this Flickr facial recognition class action lawsuit investigation.

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This article is not legal advice. It is presented
for informational purposes only.