Photo by Free-Photos on Pixabay
Flickr Vows to Not Delete Creative Commons Images or Those of Deceased Members
After SmugMug purchased photo service Flickr from Verizon, it announced that it would be limiting the number of photos stored in free accounts (see “Flickr Limits Free Accounts to 1000 Photos to Make the Service Sustainable,” 5 November 2018). Flickr later extended its February deadline (see “Flickr Extends Photo Deletion Deadline to 12 March 2019,” 8 February 2019) and is now taking extra steps to quell concerns. In a blog post, the company said that it would protect all Creative Commons-licensed images from deletion, citing the tremendous contribution those images have been to the Web, but it is also disabling its bulk license change tools so you can’t quickly set all of your images to Creative Commons to store them for free. Flickr will also allow the accounts of deceased members to remain forever at no charge—if you know of such an account, you can request that it be set to an “In Memoriam” account. Those who worry about how their digital lives will survive for posterity should keep this in mind while preparing a digital will—see Joe Kissell’s Take Control of Your Digital Legacy for additional advice.
Still a Flickr member after all these years. So quiet for a while, it’s been picking up of late, though far short of the level of response I get on Instagram. Nice to see some heat about the place.
It retains a high degree of usefulness with the 49$ Pro subscription, I’m glad I kept that up. This response is typical of the new owners, decent and well thought through. They offer free Pro accounts to museums and charities, really good.