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I don't know if this is related or not but back when Flickr was popular in like 2005 or 2006 my friends and I were uploading pictures of our events there (they'

I don't know if this is related or not but back when Flickr was popular in like 2005 or 2006 my friends and I were uploading pictures of our events there (they're all still there AFAIK. We'd upload them to either our own accounts or for certain events to a shared account. One shared account is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sourpower/albums https://www.flickr.com/photos/sourpower/albums I wanted copies of those pictures and the easiest way to get them was the write a tool to download them rather than have to coordinate with 3 to 15 friends and ask them to copy the images to a CD or USB stick or some other nonsense. Dropbox wasn't a thing and not all my friends were tech heads that would want to setup FTP servers. Flickr had also come out with an API. APIs for online services seemed kind of new at that point and Flickr was one of the first AFAIK. So I wrote the app https://blog.greggman.com/blog/flickrdown/ https://blog.greggman.com/blog/flickrdown/ and a few months later it was accused by other users of flickr of being solely for the purpose of downloading copywritten images. Not once did I ever use it for such a purpose nor, AFAIK did any of my friends. None of us had any interest in other people's images on flickr, only shared images of mutually attended parties, bbq, picnics, events. Those users reported the app to Flickr and the app was banned. It was banned by the app's id. That meant you could register your own app and then hack in your app's id and still use it. IIRC I continued to use it to download pictures from our events but it always pissed me off they banned it. It also pissed me off because it wasn't accessing anything you couldn't just scrape for. The API made it easy to get a list of URLs, search for albums or people etc but you could easily write a script that just scraped the HTML to find all the same data. Didn't matter, flickr didn't budge. It further pissed me off that over zealous flickr members accused me of lying about its purpose. Like many topics today, there is often absolutely nothing you can say that will convince someone else your intensions are not bad.

michaelmior 6y ago
While I can understand your frustration, I also understand the frustration of photographers and other creators trying to make a living who have their work stolen. Their anger was wrongly directed at you, but it is a real problem.
- pjc50 6y ago
  It's basically over now; since photographers don't have a cartel backing them like film or music, and photos are so easy to copy, everything is basically everywhere. Newspapers will routinely rip off photos from social media, sometimes in the face of explicit non permission.
- greggman3 6y ago
  While I agree with you that photographers are hurt by having their photos copied I'm not convinced my app was a problem. I personally doubt anyone was using it to bulk download copywritten photos and somehow use those photos. I could be wrong but I believe most people that steal photos still them a few at time. Basically they're making some article, they need a related photo, they search, grab a 2 to 5 and stick them in their article. They'd do this with the browser, not my app. My app didn't let you search by keyword, only by user. Further it didn't remove watermarks or do anything else. If photographers put their photos on flickr and they care about stealing they usually both watermark and only put relatively low-res versions there and you have to pay them for high res versions. If flickr provided logs that showed bulk download and further some proof that even with bulk download that it was actually affecting professional photographers and not just a few geeks collecting some pictures they liked then I'd be more inclined to buy into their ban but without that I'm pretty confident the ban had no basis in reality.
  - michaelmior 6y ago
    I wasn't intending to suggest you were contributing to the problem. If others used your tool improperly, that's not your fault. But I can understand why some photographers who have had their content stolen could be upset. As far as Flickr's response in banning your app, it does seem at least misguided. I also wonder if they were concerned about making it too easy for people to move to another platform.
- deepspace 6y ago
  I would argue that the "stealing" does not happen at the time of download; after all the photos are free to view on Flickr as many times as you want, and your browser needs to 'download' them in order to show them to you. Saving a copy to your own hard drive for offline viewing does not fundamentally change that interaction. It is only when you re-publish the photos that it becomes theft of intellectual property.
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
This story clearly illustrates the purpose behind "web APIs". To limit access. As a user (not a web developer), I personally never saw the practical point of web APIs; I have always just "scraped the HTML". Many times the solutions I write outlive the corresponding "API"; IME, often the non-API method of data retrieval is more robust and reliable than using the so-called API. YouTube used to have a freely accessible search API. Not anymore. However "scraping" the YT search result pages continues to work fine.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  The purpose of APIs it to provide a “uniform” interface. HTML layouts can change. JavaScript could be added to download the images after page load. An API shouldn’t change as often. And if the API is “versioned”, you can usually use the old version (old HTML layout) for a while before you upgrade (compared to your tool breaking as soon as the HTML changes).
  - mrmonkeyman 6y ago
    In theory, yes. In practice, no.
  - account42 6y ago
    That is the promise of APIs, but there is no guarantee.
  - dreamcompiler 6y ago
    The purpose of an API is like a company mission statement: There's one version written on the wall and then there's the actual version everybody knows is true but they don't say it out loud. You described the written one above. GP described the actual one.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > YouTube used to have a freely accessible search API. Twitter used to have RSS/Atom feeds for each account so you could follow someone without a client, just a regular old news aggregator.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> Like many topics today, there is often absolutely nothing you can say that will convince someone else your intensions are not bad. Sometimes it's better to not even try. Acting is always the more powerful move. Just do your thing. You wrote an awesome program that downloads stuff, they got offended and banned it. You've already accomplished your goal so you let it go... But if you cared enough you could just write a scraper for the website itself. What are they gonna do about it? In an ideal world, downloading copywritten data would be so easy and ubiquitous that the intellectual property laws would be unenforceable. Sure, they would get mad but who cares? There's very little they can do about it.
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  Funnily enough IP laws do little to protect authors, it's more like a framework to make money for big organisations who pretend they protect authors' interests.
Mizza 6y ago
I have a very similar story! I maintain a similar project for SoundCloud called SoundScrape: https://github.com/Miserlou/soundscrape https://github.com/Miserlou/soundscrape which I started for a similar reason, to save my own 'likes' and tracks that I've made and my friends have made. SoundCloud made this very easy, as they had an API which exposed the endpoint MP3/WAV location in a field. The tool used an API key provided by SoundCloud to fetch the response. Overnight and without warning, they removed that field from responses, changed the terms of service, banned my application for terms of service violations, and deleted all of my personal music and likes because I had used my own account to create the API key. I was very angry at the time since all my my music got deleted, but these days I'm just sad. Things like this have little by little destroyed all of my enthusiasm for technology. I want to be a carpenter now.
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  Did they at least provide an API that allowed to download your own account? I think they should have such feature thanks to GDPR.
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago
  > I was very angry at the time since all my my music got deleted, but these days I'm just sad. Things like this have little by little destroyed all of my enthusiasm for technology. I want to be a carpenter now. When I was a kid, I watched with wonder and delight at all the amazing things we were doing and inventing. We were poor so I didn't get much tech, but I always marveled at it. I saved up for ages to buy one of those personal organizers that were all the rage in the mid 90's. I saw myself as part of a world working together to build a brighter future for all of us, and I think I wasn't alone in that. It is true that the seeds of many issues we face today were already firmly planted in those days and that it was unrealistic. But there is value in dreams because dreams tell us who we want to be and give us the engine to get there. Today, I couldn't care less about tech, actively see it as a negative influence on human life, and understand the Amish and Luddites alot better. I'm currently planning to build a farm out in the middle of nowhere and then Apple can have its fiefdom, Google can own everyone's data and control what people think, they all can tell people what they're allowed to say as our new overlords and I just won't care at all.

michaelmior 6y ago

While I can understand your frustration, I also understand the frustration of photographers and other creators trying to make a living who have their work stolen. Their anger was wrongly directed at you, but it is a real problem.

pjc50 6y ago
It's basically over now; since photographers don't have a cartel backing them like film or music, and photos are so easy to copy, everything is basically everywhere. Newspapers will routinely rip off photos from social media, sometimes in the face of explicit non permission.
greggman3 6y ago
While I agree with you that photographers are hurt by having their photos copied I'm not convinced my app was a problem. I personally doubt anyone was using it to bulk download copywritten photos and somehow use those photos. I could be wrong but I believe most people that steal photos still them a few at time. Basically they're making some article, they need a related photo, they search, grab a 2 to 5 and stick them in their article. They'd do this with the browser, not my app. My app didn't let you search by keyword, only by user. Further it didn't remove watermarks or do anything else. If photographers put their photos on flickr and they care about stealing they usually both watermark and only put relatively low-res versions there and you have to pay them for high res versions. If flickr provided logs that showed bulk download and further some proof that even with bulk download that it was actually affecting professional photographers and not just a few geeks collecting some pictures they liked then I'd be more inclined to buy into their ban but without that I'm pretty confident the ban had no basis in reality.
- michaelmior 6y ago
  I wasn't intending to suggest you were contributing to the problem. If others used your tool improperly, that's not your fault. But I can understand why some photographers who have had their content stolen could be upset. As far as Flickr's response in banning your app, it does seem at least misguided. I also wonder if they were concerned about making it too easy for people to move to another platform.
deepspace 6y ago
I would argue that the "stealing" does not happen at the time of download; after all the photos are free to view on Flickr as many times as you want, and your browser needs to 'download' them in order to show them to you. Saving a copy to your own hard drive for offline viewing does not fundamentally change that interaction. It is only when you re-publish the photos that it becomes theft of intellectual property.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

This story clearly illustrates the purpose behind "web APIs". To limit access. As a user (not a web developer), I personally never saw the practical point of web APIs; I have always just "scraped the HTML". Many times the solutions I write outlive the corresponding "API"; IME, often the non-API method of data retrieval is more robust and reliable than using the so-called API. YouTube used to have a freely accessible search API. Not anymore. However "scraping" the YT search result pages continues to work fine.

colejohnson66 6y ago
The purpose of APIs it to provide a “uniform” interface. HTML layouts can change. JavaScript could be added to download the images after page load. An API shouldn’t change as often. And if the API is “versioned”, you can usually use the old version (old HTML layout) for a while before you upgrade (compared to your tool breaking as soon as the HTML changes).
- mrmonkeyman 6y ago
  In theory, yes. In practice, no.
- account42 6y ago
  That is the promise of APIs, but there is no guarantee.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  The purpose of an API is like a company mission statement: There's one version written on the wall and then there's the actual version everybody knows is true but they don't say it out loud. You described the written one above. GP described the actual one.
throw0101a 6y ago
> YouTube used to have a freely accessible search API. Twitter used to have RSS/Atom feeds for each account so you could follow someone without a client, just a regular old news aggregator.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

> Like many topics today, there is often absolutely nothing you can say that will convince someone else your intensions are not bad. Sometimes it's better to not even try. Acting is always the more powerful move. Just do your thing. You wrote an awesome program that downloads stuff, they got offended and banned it. You've already accomplished your goal so you let it go... But if you cared enough you could just write a scraper for the website itself. What are they gonna do about it? In an ideal world, downloading copywritten data would be so easy and ubiquitous that the intellectual property laws would be unenforceable. Sure, they would get mad but who cares? There's very little they can do about it.

intricatedetail 6y ago
Funnily enough IP laws do little to protect authors, it's more like a framework to make money for big organisations who pretend they protect authors' interests.

Mizza 6y ago

I have a very similar story! I maintain a similar project for SoundCloud called SoundScrape: https://github.com/Miserlou/soundscrape https://github.com/Miserlou/soundscrape which I started for a similar reason, to save my own 'likes' and tracks that I've made and my friends have made. SoundCloud made this very easy, as they had an API which exposed the endpoint MP3/WAV location in a field. The tool used an API key provided by SoundCloud to fetch the response. Overnight and without warning, they removed that field from responses, changed the terms of service, banned my application for terms of service violations, and deleted all of my personal music and likes because I had used my own account to create the API key. I was very angry at the time since all my my music got deleted, but these days I'm just sad. Things like this have little by little destroyed all of my enthusiasm for technology. I want to be a carpenter now.

intricatedetail 6y ago
Did they at least provide an API that allowed to download your own account? I think they should have such feature thanks to GDPR.
RonanTheGrey 6y ago
> I was very angry at the time since all my my music got deleted, but these days I'm just sad. Things like this have little by little destroyed all of my enthusiasm for technology. I want to be a carpenter now. When I was a kid, I watched with wonder and delight at all the amazing things we were doing and inventing. We were poor so I didn't get much tech, but I always marveled at it. I saved up for ages to buy one of those personal organizers that were all the rage in the mid 90's. I saw myself as part of a world working together to build a brighter future for all of us, and I think I wasn't alone in that. It is true that the seeds of many issues we face today were already firmly planted in those days and that it was unrealistic. But there is value in dreams because dreams tell us who we want to be and give us the engine to get there. Today, I couldn't care less about tech, actively see it as a negative influence on human life, and understand the Amish and Luddites alot better. I'm currently planning to build a farm out in the middle of nowhere and then Apple can have its fiefdom, Google can own everyone's data and control what people think, they all can tell people what they're allowed to say as our new overlords and I just won't care at all.