Flickr changes tune over Obama Joker image

Stephen Shankland
CNET News
September 3, 2009

[efoods]Flickr has adopted a less severe way of handling copyright infringement claims after heated debate erupted about a photo of president Obama modified to look like The Joker from the film of DC Comics’ The Dark Knight.

Previously, certain copyright infringement complaints were met with the removal of an image. If the complaint was overruled, the Flickr member who posted the image was allowed to repost it. However, after the Joker Obama case, Flickr decided to merely replace the image in question with a message, a move that means the discussion below the image is preserved, which eases republication if the removal is overturned.

The move illustrates the complexities that have arisen in the digital era where photos can be transferred and modified with ease. Copyright law is a much older concept than the internet, although it has been renovated a bit relatively recently with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

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