Interesting reading on theft of images from a Flickr account.....

http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9867114-39.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

if you don't want your photos stolen, don't post them on Flickr.

I saw that Radlafx gave a warning,

if you don't want your photos stolen, don't post them on Flickr.

I am not that familiar with Flickr ... is there something about the site; the way it is orgainzed; or some other factor that makes the image theft easier or more likely there than other sites? 

--
Martin

The use of images taken from Flickr is notorious, even large multi national companies have been known to use it to get a free photo for their advertising.  Such as the case of Alison Chang a 15yr old girl who's photo was taken by Virgin and used in their advertising campaigns in Australia. 

Flickr users are given a choice when they upload of how they would like to license their image. Many choose ' common license'  which allows the taking and using of the image by anyone even for commercial purposes.

Quote - if you don't want your photos stolen, don't post them on Flickr.

Moran of the story: If you don't want your photos stolen don't post them on the web fullstop...

There are a series of precautions you need to apply before posting your photos on the web, be it on FlickR, Renderosity or on a personal website.

1. Make sure you use a license restricting any unwanted uses. The 'common license' on FlickR seems way too permissive. I use a Creative Commons license for photos posted on my website that prevents any commercial use or transformation.You also need to make sure that the license terms are understandable and make a direct link to the file whenever it is possible
2. Never, ever post a high res picture on the web. This is begging to have it stolen. There are many possible uses for pictures of more than 700 pixels wide. You can resell it through microstock websites, have them printed, crop them and use them on a website... And there is a fairly large choice of high res pictures posted on the web to do this... including on most of the galleries at Renderosity! I once had a 800 pixels wide photo of a giraffe stolen and used on the French edition of Science magazine. The resolution was enough to make a half page without pixellization.
3. Include a signature on your pictures whenever you post them on the web. It may be cropped out, but may limit some uses of your photos.
4. If you have a personal website, make sure you forbid hotlinking with a script in your .htaccess. Uncontrolled use of your photos can be really damaging, if done on a large scale. I once had 26 of my photos used in an email message sent to thousands of people in the Middle East. Bandwith usage on my website quickly skyrocketed to 8 Gb a day, prompting my ISP to close the website. It took a week to go back to normal.

** "Never, ever post a high res picture on the web.** **This is begging to have it stolen. There are many possible uses for pictures of more than 700 pixels wide. You can resell it through microstock websites, have them printed, crop them and use them on a website... And there is a fairly large choice of high res pictures posted on the web to do this... including on most of the galleries at Renderosity! "

**@offrench.....well said...and some good points...