Imagine that your internet browser (e.g., Yahoo) is a car.
Imagine that you use flickr to drive your car.
Imagine that you drive the car on the right side of the road in Los Angeles, California.
Imagine that you want to drive a car in London, UK, and Londoners drive their cars on the left side of the road.
1. Would you bring your Los Angeles car to London and drive on the right side of the road?
2. Would you rent a car in London and drive on the right side of the road?
3. Would you rent a car in London and drive on the left side of the road?
4. Would you simply not drive in London.
Which two of these choices would result in the destruction of the car?
Which choice saves the car and still allows you (Yahoo/Flickr) to drive in London?
Which choice is no choice at all?
When it comes to international travel, the car must always follow the local laws/rules of the road or suffer the disastrous consequences. Vehicles on the information superhighway (i.e., the internet) must also follow local laws/rules. Can local laws which censor the internet be modified or mitigated by Yahoo/flickr? It is possible.
International laws recognize the doctrine of comity: “The doctrine of comity, in the Supreme Court's classic formulation, is "..,the recognition which one nation allows within its territory to the legislative, executive, or judicial acts of another nation, having due regard both to international duty and convenience, and to the rights of its own citizens or of other persons who are under the protections of its laws.” So, a nation can influence another nation in such a way as to modify or mitigate trade, travel, licensing, etc., restrictions.
Has Yahoo/Flickr tried to influence nations that severly restrict access to its products and services? It would seem that discussions with these nations about censorship would result in some concessions and maybe in some better solutions. So, I will ass-u-me that Yahoo has a "comity" program in place - good business for everyone, right?
I know that Google is aggressively and creatively addressing the internet censorship problem:
“The online search giant is taking a novel approach to the problem by asking U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers, similar to other hurdles to global commerce, such as tariffs.”
So, what does one do when confronted with internet censorship? The flickr community is facing this dilemma right now. I commiserate with flickr members who do not wish to support Yahoo's censorship solutions. Many talented artists have left flickr, disgusted with the new image filtering system and its bias toward blandness (i.e., safe images).
However, I belong to several US internet art communities and all of them self-regulate their sites to avoid local and international censorship problems. No matter who your imaging chauffeur may be, the site still has to deal with international censorship problems and I applaud Flickr for listening and actually making some minor advances on behalf of its members. So, I don’t see the point in deleting my flickr site when I am already paid up through 2008.
I am becoming disenchanted, however, with the increasing restrictions and filters not just on nudity but on other art forms such as illustrations and paintings, etc. The NIPSA issue especially is bothersome for people like me who create images using photoshop. So, I'm exploring other sites such as Renderosity, deviantART, Saatchi Gallery, for photoshopped images and welcome any suggestions.
The point at which I lose enthusiasm and interest for any internet art community is when it takes more time and effort to post my images than it takes to create them. I am hopeful, flickr will avoid focusing on the logistics and get back to making the community fun.
