It's important to read Creative Commons licenses carefully: some grant other people the right to make money off of your original work in ways you never envision

It's important to read Creative Commons licenses carefully: some grant other people the right to make money off of your original work in ways you never envisioned, without any compensation to you. Photographer Thomas Hawk wrote, correctly: "If you are going to license your photos Creative Commons with no restriction, then you ought to be prepared for this type of use. If it’s not Flickr selling them, anyone else can, legally. If you are uncomfortable with this idea, then you should not use Creative Commons without any sort of restriction."[1] The photographers who are now upset apparently never read those licenses. And they're irrevocable, according to Creative Commons itself[2], meaning there's no legal recourse if someone wants to sell coffee mugs or T-Shirts with your CC-BY or CC-BY-SA-licensed photos. To Yahoo's credit, they are voluntarily allowing photographers to opt-out. (What's interesting is that of the 14 photographers interviewed by the WSJ in the linked article, 8 actually didn't care. I would have guessed that number would have been higher.) This is a separate issue from the "handpicked" Flickr photos, with a 51% revenue split. The actual Yahoo announcement[3] says the handpicked rev-share option is "invite-only," so presumably photographers who opt-in are okay with the terms. Legality aside, I suspect Yahoo will regret this move. Seems to me that the negatives outweigh the revenue (especially since anyone can also offer CC prints), and users may view it as at odds with Flickr's 2011 claim that "at Flickr, your photos are always yours." Also Google+ has better editing tools and free unlimited photo storage (for <=2048px, I think), so that might prompt folks to move their photos over. [1] http://thomashawk.com/2014/11/the-controversy-around-flickr-selling-creative-commons-licensed-photos.html http://thomashawk.com/2014/11/the-controversy-around-flickr-... [2] http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/10296 http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/10296 [3] https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157649323144986/page2/ https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157649323144986/pa...