Protests on Flickr Video
A large number of Flickr users are protesting the release of video support on Flickr. There are petitions on the site asking for Flickr to roll back the service. I do understand the reasoning behind these protests as will anyone who has seen the mess youtube is.
As mentioned earlier, Flickr has put a limit of 90 seconds on the uploaded videos, but that is still enough to produce a lot of trash. I doubt that Flickr will roll back the feature.
Here are some protests from around the web by people who don’t like the idea of Flickr video:
Someone designed a tee-shirt to show their protest. Click on the image to visit their page.
A lot of people are not happy with the whole idea and are fully supporting anyone who is speaking out.
Someone registered a domain name: http://www.no-video-on-flickr.com/ which points to a web page with the same message. (However, by the looks of the advertisements on this page, it looks like a very clever move to take advantage of all the activity around this.)
Here are some quotes from a group page on Flickr which has over 12000 members at the time I write this:
Chris says:
Yea, I liked Flickr because of the same reason. I liked the photo only and how it was arranged for viewing. Now do we have to worry server problems with all the videos being uploaded and viewed?
Pacoguevara says:
Welcome to the new trash video site. *sigh*
Me Dayglo:
I’ve only recently joined flickr - 2 months ago - and I really enjoyed the fact that it was single image usually photogrpahy of some sort. Video typically stinks ands there is already a well established home for that sort of “oh look my cats fallen off the fridge” stuff. I won’t be uploading any videos, I won’t be viewing any videos and if flickr turns into video land - sorry I’ll be off. That is all!
What’s to notice is that a lot of these users are “Pro” users which means that they pay to use Flickr. These are the only people who have upload access for videos.