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Is Flickr Trying To Screw Artists?

Posted: August 23rd, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Marketing | 10 Comments »

My sister is the one in the family that can draw and paint, I on the other hand was born with less obvious talents, anyway, I’ve got her into flickr and she has taken to it like a duck to water. She’s far more hooked into the flickr community than I, she’s got one painting with over 50 comments, and that IMHO is officially a shitload.

Anyway, I just found out that Flickr is quietly turning off the visability of accounts that have more art than photography on them, and thats even for paid up “pro” accounts. It’s called NIPSA (Not In Public Areas).

This is from some Flickr customer service corrospondance with an artist called Roy Blumenthal

With some exceptions, it’s OK to post other images, but if
the majority of your photostream contains content other than
photographs (like illustrations, screenshots, diagrams,
etc.) it’s very likely that your account will be marked Not
in Public Site Areas (NIPSA). NIPSA means your photos won’t
show up in photo searches, but they will still be visible
in your pages, your groups and contacts.

Here’s a longer post documenting an artists back and forth with flickr customer service after he found out his account was now NIPSA.

I understand that flickr is trying to avoid becoming storage for the flotsom and jetsom of screenshots like photobucket or imageshack, but I wish they would be cooler with the people adding original artwork, I mean that’s life enriching stuff right there. Fiona’s photo stream is all artwork, but is way more interesting than a lot of people photos :-)

So what can we do to save artists of flickr from becoming NIPSA? A SaveFlickrArtists tag maybe? What do you think?

  • http://www.breebop.com bree

    I don’t think flickr is trying to screw artists. Rather, it’s trying to keep the focus on photography, which is what the site was created for.

    It would be nice if they would create a category of search for artwork, however, so that artists could still use the service to store photographs or slides of their work.

    An alternative might be to use a tag-based sorting as you’ve suggested above, only pick a tag cluster of more specific, generic terms such as ‘painting, artwork, art’ etc. That way you wouldn’t have to be in on the meme to send your artwork to a publicly visible place.

    There could also be an exception made for groups that are specifically art-focused. There are several currently on Flickr. Allowing photo representations of artwork in those areas alone would be adequate, I think.

    I also have some images of my artwork on the site, though they’re far outnumbered by photographs. It’s nice to be able to expose both forms of art to a wider audience.

  • karl long

    Good points Bree, I guess the thing that seems weird and un-flickr like is the way they are switching peoples accounts over without telling them. I love flickr, and just think they need to work on their communication, and be clear about their policies.

  • http://schmucknews.blogspot.com Roy Blumenthal

    Hiya Karl…

    The strange thing about the NIPSA issue is that there is no way of actually TELLING if your account has been marked NIPSA by them.

    You kinda get a feeling at some point when you notice that your pics aren’t being viewed quite as much as they used to.

    And then you do a tag search, using one of the unique tags in one of your pics. And, lo and behold, nothing shows up. You simply don’t exist.

    Every single pic of mine has a ‘royblumenthal’ tag. If you search the tags for ‘royblumenthal’, you will not find me. You won’t even see my profile.

    I agree with Bree about it being a space for photos. And it really is constituted as such.

    What I object to is this:

    1. I’ve ALWAYS only had my artworks in my photostream.

    2. I was marked NIPSA only recently, after about a year or two of being on Flickr, and around 6 months into my paid pro membership.

    3. They didn’t tell me about it.

    4. You have to search quite carefully through their smallprint to find that drawings are not welcome.

    5. I’m invisible now to the Flickr community, aside from people who happen upon some of my stuff in groups I belong to.

    6. If they didn’t allow drawings and artworks, they should EXPRESSLY FORBID IT, and make your NIPSA marking VISIBLE to you, and REVERSIBLE if you follow certain guidelines.

    7. There are hundreds of thousands of artworks on Flickr. And many hundreds of groups dedicated specifically and solely to artworks. They’re pissing off a LOT of people. And that kind of pissed-off-ness leads to a groundswell of public opinion against them sooner or later.

    Good on you for the blog post.

    Blue skies
    love
    Roy

  • http://mnteractive.com/archive/flickrs-nipsa-another-reason-for-customer-as-silo/ MNteractive » Flickr’s NIPSA – Another Reason for Customer as Silo

    [...] UPDATE: Karl Long asks the same question. | Email It | Digg It | Del.icio.us It [...]

  • http://fionalongart.co.uk/?p=56 Fiona Long Art » Is Flickr Trying To Screw Artists?

    [...] Check out my brother’s blog entry on this topic. I’m outraged! [...]

  • http://www.fionalongart.co.uk Fiona Long

    Hi Karl,

    Thanks for the kind things you said about my photostream. I’m just glad that you’ve managed to see it at all! I think what Flickr is doing is outrageous! Isn’t photography an art form? What if you want to take an interesting photograph of a sculpture? Where do you draw the line (not that they like line drawings of course!) and why should there be a distinction?
    It seems totally closed minded to me. I used to get very positive comments from people who had searched for elephants for example, found my painting and enjoyed it. Why should people only be able to find photographs and not every image on the subject they are interested in? Some people are not as closed minded as Flickr seems to be and if they don’t like something they can just keep going. Art seems to be treated like offensive porn or something! I wonder what the policy on that is?

  • karl long

    It seems that flickr has this in it’s terms of service under the community guidlines: http://flickr.com/guidelines.gne

    I’m somewhat torn, I can see what flickr was trying to avoid with this strategy, they didn’t want to become and “imageshack” or “photobucket” where all the accounts are full of crappy images that most people grab off joke web sites. IMHO I enjoy seeing original artwork in the mix, and it is clearly a huge community of people on flickr who are contributing to flickr as a vibrant community.

    I think Phil’s points about notification and guidlines is important. They should have some kind of notification of being deemed NIPSA, as opposed to this stealth approach they are using. Providing guidlines for how to bring your account back from being NIPSA is important as well.

  • http://www.fionalongart.co.uk Fiona Long

    Here is some correspondence onne of my Flickr contacts had:

    “I emailed flicker about why my photos were not showing up on searches and this is the reply I got. I think we should go elsewhere as they obviously do not want us here. Anyone got any ideas”

    Hello,

    Thanks for your question.

    Our Community Guidelines state that non-photographic
    images such as screen shots, paintings, drawings,
    illustrations, graphic designs, scanned images, or digital
    art are not allowed in public areas of the site. You may
    still see some, but these types of images are generally
    blocked from appearing in searches or the Explore pages.

    Regards,

    Monish

  • http://schmucknews.blogspot.com Roy Blumenthal

    Hi Guys…

    It would be glorious of you to add your vote to the DIGG story about this topic.

    Thanks!

    Blue skies
    love
    Roy

  • http://BajunaJewelry.com Kathy Noda

    I have a flickr site bajunajewelry http://www.flickr.com/photos/bajunajewelry/ I take pictures of just my jewelry at the moment for flickr because I have a demonstrative blog at http://www.bajunajewelry.blogspot.com that is for helpful hints about making jewelry and I use the slide show feature. If I mix in pictures then the slideshow picks all of them and they won’t be relative to my blog. I believe as an artist I am being singled out, too. Most of my pictures are nice I think and demonstrative of the types of talent out there. What do you think I would have to do to get un Nipsa? I asked for specifics and they just say I look like a catalog.