As I was preparing for today's post about Hamburg, I noticed a commotion on Flickr. Flickr is the online photo platform I use to upload my Blog pictures. Maybe I should say "used to use"?
Here is what happened:
A photo was posted on Flickr that read: Think Flickr, think! Against Censorship!
This photo was all of a sudden uploaded by more and more people and the photo explanation read:
If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off. In other words, German users can not access photos on flickr that are not flagged "safe" ... only flowers and landscapes for Germans ...Copy and upload this picture to your account - show flickr who we are!
Now, I am really surprised! Germany is one of the most liberal countries in the world when it comes to nudity. No, we don't run around naked all the time, but we have legal nude beaches. It is also very common for women to sunbathe topless even in public parks and advertising on TV and in magazines show partial nudity as no big deal. We are not talking porn here (which is also legal with certain age restrictions), but maybe partial nudity that is often shown in a very artistic way.
Why on earth is Flickr (or its parent company Yahoo!) censoring Germany? There are plenty of Photo Communities that do no censor legal photos. It certainly can not be against the law here, so why does Flickr / Yahoo! act this way?
Now you have some idea, how liberal Germany is in this respect and why I am so ticked off by this.
From now on, I will post the photos differently to the Blog. Maybe, if Flickr lifts the ban on Germany, I will go back to linking the photos from there.
But for now, I choose not to!
P.S. Thank you to the duck and the statue that were a perfect match for my little Photoshop work ;)
Yahoo! (the owner of flickr) has posted the storie in the Financial News:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070615/flickr_censorship.html
This is Flickr's responds in their Blog and what others have to say about it:http://flickr.com/help/forum/42597/page5/#reply227666
