Yahoo removes private photos of protestor
By Shalini Singh

Yahoo picture site and community Flickr is popular in India and the rest of the world. Flickr users have uploaded more than 3 billion photos.  Flickr also offers a premium service to its users which enables them to have more space, speed and preferential help from the service desk. Now Yahoo is being accused of removing the personal photos of an anti-Obama protestor.

The White House has a photostream on Flickr.  Anyone can logon and see President Obama’s meetings and social activities in real time.  Flickr, like all Web 2 sites, allows users to comment on the pictures.

Most of the comments are civil, but sometimes there is political protest.  An American was so enraged by President Obama trying to censor the torture photos in Iraq taken during President Bush’s regime that he left comments lashing out at Obama.  He then even put a torture photo in the comments section of President Obama’s photostream. Such torture photos/comments are definitely inappropriate in the Presidential photostream as it is watched by many school children.

Valleywag is reporting that Yahoo, without any warning, suspended this protestor’s account.  In the process, he has lost at least 1200 personal photos uploaded to Flickr.

Most of the Valleywag commentators are in agreement that Yahoo’s Flickr, like any other website, has a right to warn and politely eject anyone who breaches their terms of service.  What is unacceptable is denying the protestor a chance to move his 1200 personal photos from Flickr before he was permanently ejected.  Especially, because he had a premium Flickr account.  This is a particularly sensitive subject for Flickr as the photographic community rebels against any form of censorship.

Wikipedia has detailed how Flickr introduced mandatory filtering in 2007 of all photos, and a process of central review by staff. For some time, Flickr users in Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea were prevented from seeing photos rated as ‘moderate’ or ‘restricted’. Flickr is banned in UAE and occasionally by China.

Wikipedia also mentions how Flickr moved all its photos from computers in Canada to USA in 2005 thus ensuring that they come under US law.