You may have noticed your photos hosted on Flickr are no longer appearing in posts. We have been informed the hot-linking option has been turned off for SSC, presumably due to persistent and numerous violations of their usage conditions. Jan is on top of this and is working with Flickr management on a solution.

However, I'd like to emphasize it is each forumer's responsibility to properly credit the photos they take from the web. This applies across all sections and sub-sections. I have begun a mass deletion exercise of posts that violate these requirements in the Hong Kong section, and this will only accelerate going forward. Persistent violators will be persecuted and punished severely. I am working with mods from other sections to coordinate a joint effort across the forum and hope Flickr management can see our efforts and reconsider their ban.

Every forumer also has a responsibility to report violations to me or to another mod. Please PM us with links and post numbers when you see violations.

Just to be clear, there is a script that automatically adds a code crediting Flickr on each photo you post from their site. In addition, you need to properly credit the author. This could be done in many ways, such as providing a link to the author's page or the page of that photo where the author's name can be seen.

Thanks for your understanding and patience.

You'd think that flickr would have added such a functionality to their website to facilitate such a process, ie that whatever rights the uploader chose to release would come with the appropriate text and tagging in flickr's self-generated upload links.

I can't imagine ssc being the only online forum for which hotlinking has been banned for this reason.

That said, of course, it's the responsibility of SSC forum members to make sure the rights of the uploaders are protected, but perhaps until the issues are resolved we can use alternative services for our own pictures (of course we have no control over pictures non-ssc members upload)?

Jan has negotiated a solution with Flickr and the hot-linking is turned on again. The reason for all this is because some forumers were not linking back to the original image. We cannot blame Flickr for not providing an idiot-proof way of sourcing. It's our responsibility to source our posts.

Its back to normal. Flickr images are working again.