The attribution part of the license means you have to give credit, share-a-like part of the license means you should really not be owning the rights to the photo just because it’s on your site (unless the real owner has agreed to that). The non-commercial part says obviously if you can or cannot use the work for commercial reasons, a lack of non-comercial means you can use the work for commercial reasons.

However if I give a photo (email it to the picture desk) and agree to the terms then yes I’ve given up some of my rights. If the terms say “by giving us this photo you give use certain rights” that’s fine, but if a photo is taken from me and my work is copylefted and share-a-like then the rights need to be agreed if they are going to be changed.

I wouldn’t have thought many professionals or ‘full-time amateurs’ would offer up their work to the Post, especially if they already have their own established platform (Flickr or otherwise).

Should the Post be opening a Flickr-linked Facebook account? (maybe not)

In my opinion any exposure for a photographer is helpful and as long as the Post was respectful of intellectual copyright (and so on) a partnership between them and the Flickr community would be mutually beneficial. It is, in fact, very heartening to see the Post reaching out in this way. I agree that a Post group probably wouldn’t work though unless a significant amount of effort was put in by its admins to keep it alive through competitions and events. A blog would be great however if it was well run, something along the lines of CIB but concentrated solely on Brummie photography, with support from traditional and online media.

I would love to see the Post’s Flickr account too, there are some good photogs on the paper who are somewhat underappreciated I think.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/
http://flickr.com/groups/wordofmouth/

How are other newspapers or magazines approaching these sorts of issues? Have any other publications got a model for this sort of thing in place.

BP.

Apologies I haven’t been able to write a response earlier. I am on a late shift tonight.

Thank you all for the comments so far. Please keep them coming!

Most of what I want to say is already well summed up by Pete Ashton.

But I think it’s worth stressing that the idea is not to use Flickr pictures for articles, etc. Unless, or course, we contacted the owner for permission and paid for them.

What we’re talking about here is a specific Flickr showcase or blog – so anyone visiting The Post website can see some fantastic shots of Birmingham and, if they click on the link, explore the work of the local photographers that took them.

We would credit people and the pictures would only feature in that particular section of the site.

The idea behind it is about getting our audience in touch with other good content out there on the web and… hopefully… vice versa.

I really, really want to stress this idea never came about as a plan to rip people off. Pete has said it better than I, but we have plenty of good photographers here at The Post and long may that continue to be the case.

In response to Stephen: you’re right, The Post probably wouldn’t give everyone access to 150 years of photos. But then, I don’t think I’m asking anyone on Flickr to give us that level of access either. All I’m suggesting is that, now and again, they may be happy to submit a photo to The Post Flickr pool and for it to be displayed and linked to on our Flickr feed on our website.

Also, I see no reason why in the future The Post shouldn’t provide Flickr users with access to some of its shots. I’d like to see the Post with its own Flickr account and putting up shots relevent to the week’s news.

No I didn’t think so.