Can You Use Flickr Pics in Ads?

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by: Ilya Vedrashko

"Virgin Mobile Australia has started an advertising campaign called "Are you with us or what?", which has been collecting images from Flickr released under a CC-BY licence, which allows commercial re-use and modification of the licensed work." (Technollama via Idea City).

Apparently, Virgin didn't have to ask for a permission to use the pictures and they didn't, but people (photographers and subjects) are pissed. All images come with a link back to the photographer's profile. An interesting problem. Here's a lively discussion happening in the comments under one such picture.

On the other hand, Virgin could've handled the situation much more gracefully, like Nikon.

Original Post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/07/can-you-use-flickr-pics-in-ads.html