Why I Say the Independent was being Cheap
As a precursor to this article – the Peter Zabulis issue has been resolved and the Independent has now agreed to pay for use of his photograph. However, the issue of commercial websites grabbing free Flickr images is far from a new one so its worth discussing here further.
In a recent article on this website – Jimmy Leach & Plagiarism at the Independent – an anonymous commenter took exception to the fact that I asserted the Independent were being cheap by using Flickr photographs on their website. Anonymous also pointed out that the issue was with a widget… apparently shoddy research on my part.
The “widget” part was not ill-researched, it just wasn’t mentioned because its irrelevant – its a side-story – and on the assumption anybody interested would actually read the Peter Zabulis page on Flickr discussing the ins and outs of this affair and have enough mental capacity to draw their own conclusions. After all, this is a weblog of my opinions and insights rather than a news service. I’d suggest if anybody is relying on citizen journalism for their information that they check to see which bloggers are opinion-sharers and which are unpaid journalists. My article was a social comment around the Peter Zabulis article – not a synopsis.
For those anonymous commenters who are looking for a synopsis you might find one in the back of a library or a crappy old side-street bookshop. However, discovering a synopsis of the Peter Zabulis page or the issue at hand might be somewhat more limited as a real world option.
For those readers of this website who are web designers and web developers we do have an idea what an API (Application Programming Interface) is there to achieve. That the Independent were running AP and Routers photography through a widget that also sourced content from the restricted and creative commons content of the Flickr stream is irrelevant. What newspaper doesn’t understand where their every single image, text piece or advertising artifact is originated – not knowing that would be incompetent. That they were breaching the terms of the Flickr API were pretty obvious… and it was a plagiarism issue because they used a large Peter Zabulis photograph for several days which clearly impinged on his ownership of that work. Further, the Independent used the photograph in a commercial capacity.
Let me ask this question again… understanding that the Independent were grabbing snow photos from the Flickr stream, was there a human censoring this process via the widget or before being displayed by the widget. I ask this because a picture of a cock and balls could be labeled snow and I’m pretty sure the Independent weren’t going for that option. Similarly, they were not going to put on everybody’s happy snaps of snowmen taken on an iPhone. So the argument about being an entirely automated system and blaming it on the widget is a lame escapist fob off that simply fails to wash with anybody familiar with web development. Was this a magic widget that could quality control and censor but amazingly had no power to distinguish between rights reserved and creative commons rights? The harder I try not to write fuck off the louder that comes out of my mouth… seriously? WTF?
To the next assertion by anonymous… that Flickr are somehow the Independent’s user content. Sorry but how does one say fuck off without actually swearing. How arrogant is that claim – all Flickr users are the Independent’s readers? It doesn’t even justify any more comment than the advice to slap oneself shitless with a course of self administered back-hands on the very next visit to the lavatory.
Now for the cheap part… because this is where my real grimace comes to the fore in this tale. Using free Flickr images on a commercial enterprise is cheap. Its framed as a for the readers delight warm and cosy mistake but in actuality any decision to fill your commercial news service with photographs from a third party free photo sharing website is pushing the cost-savings a little to the extreme. My suggestion to Jimmy Leach – pay for people to take your photographs. What you did was cheap and there’s little justification once the issue is reframed.
Because its not just Jimmy and the Independent with this issue of being cheap. Its all a part of that race to the bottom.
So to anonymous I’d have to say that widgets aren’t little black boxes of magical surprises. Especially any widget used on the Independent’s commercial website. They know what comes in, how much it costs, who owns the content and what their profits will be from day to day. They’re a business.
What you saw as a lack of research was simply a lack of commentary… in my opinion.
