#4 Flickr: Images and Copyright

Scott is rolling his eyes. "What now, irascible German life form one desk over, what's your problem now ?!?"
Well, I'm peeved, and I need to express my peevedness. The Library makes me open accounts with all kinds of sites that I never had any inclination to open accounts with. With which I never had any... et cetera.
Scott says, "nobody's making you.. Either you want the 50 bucks, or not"
Fine! I sign up for a Yahoo account to open a flickr account to advance to step 4 of 23, which all the sudden seems a looong way to go.
I finally log on to Flickr looking for "santa cruz"
Flickr says "We found 143,046 results for photos matching santa and cruz."
Wow!
Now let's see if anybody wants to share one of the 143,046 results.
One very nice Cornelius Crab invites me to download a very pretty picture of "Santa Cruz, California looking up coast towards Natural Bridges State Beach" with a choice of file sizes. Thank you very much, Cornelius Crab, you're a true giver!
But, no, wait, not so fast, there is a little copyright icon under the photo! Grinding halt, followed by brow-furrowing &
head-scratching over truely mixed messages.

I study Flickr's FAQ and "Community Guidelines" and come to the conclusion that, although I'm invited to download, and although the photo is marked "public" it is not actually in the public domain. Flickr advises that every photo on the site is copyrighted (even without a license/"All rights reserved" at the bottom) and that the person who shot the picture is to be contacted before one can "use" it (w/o defining use). See:

http://www.flickr.com/help/photos/#87
"How can I copyright my photos?"

As the good girl I am when it comes to copyright issues I will contact Cornelius and ask permission first before I show the image here, until then click on todays title to be linked to the photo.

PS: How we could use flickr for research?
Crab man's photo could be used for a lecture on shoreline corrosion, for instance, once we have the copyright issue cleared up.