Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ 500px photo site abandons freely shareable images with commercialization push

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This is a warning sign for people sharing free and open resources: they can disappear in a flash. In this case, photo sharing site 500px deleted a million Creative Commons licensed photographs with almost no warning. As reported by Michael Zhang, "overnight, all of the CC photos that have been uploaded since 2012 have been nuked from 500px. Users can no longer choose a CC license during uploading, search for CC photos, or download them." Internet Archive volunteers "rushed at the last minute to preserve all the CC photos hosted on 500px, allowing 3 terabytes of photos to be saved." And as Creative Commons CEO Ryan Merkley said, "it's disingenuous to suggest CC works didn't fare well on the platform when they weren't given the same priority other platforms like Flickr give them." Hey, I like Flickr, but I keep a backup of every photo I have, just in case. Via Digital Koans.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Nov 22, 2024 12:06 a.m.

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