Flickr Shuts Down Forum Discussion On Obama-Joker Image

by Michael Arrington on August 21, 2009 , TechCrunch.com
Aug. 23, 2009

Oh, this just gets better and better. Or perhaps sadder and sadder.

In a post earlier this morning we discussed Flickr’s questionable decision to remove a photoshopped image of President Obama that makes him look like the Heath Ledger (Joker) character from The Dark Knight. In that post we quoted Flickr's director of community Heather Champ who said "We very much value freedom of speech and creativity” in an explanation about why the image was removed from Flickr. We called B.S.

Now Flickr has shut off further comments on that forum post, which was most definitely not headed in a pro-Flickr direction. In his message shutting off the discussion, Zack Sheppard reiterates how important political discussion is to Flickr:

Political discussions and expression are definitely allowed here on Flickr. We don’t want to squelch political discussion, but if something is in violation of the Community Guidelines or copyright law and it’s reported, it will be taken down whether it’s a kitten, a sunset, or something political.

It looks like this thread has devolved into antics and gone off the rails so I’m shutting it down. The OPs question has been answered here. This image was removed because the Yahoo! Copyright Team received a complete Notice of Infringement.

This is fantastically absurd. Yahoo is quite literally trumpeting that they support political discussion in the very message they are sending to close down a political discussion.