I have received the following mail concerning my latest problem: Flickr has deleted my account. Of course I had some questions and wondered what happened, nevertheless I wrote a kind email and asked why this happened. The following was the reply from Flickr’s support:

Hi Mike,

Your account was deleted for a violation of the Flickr
Terms of Use. As Flickr is a site for sharing your photos,
posting copyrighted images, graphics, cartoons, stuff culled
from the web and other non-photo type images is
inappropriate.

I can restore your account name to you at this time, but
please check the Terms of Use carefully before proceeding
with your account.

http://www.flickr.com/terms.gne

You can sign in from http://www.flickr.com/signin/flickr
and enter your email address (***) and the
password “***”

Regards,
Ana

Alright, so my images were apparently inappropiate or included some copyrighted material. Of course I do not want this, and I do not want to violate any terms of use. Actually, I wrote a kind email back to them as seen below.

Reply to Flickr
Dear Ana,

>Your account was deleted for a violation of the Flickr
>Terms of Use. As Flickr is a site for sharing your photos,
>posting copyrighted images, graphics, cartoons, stuff culled
>from the web and other non-photo type images is
>inappropriate.

I have read through the ToU and do indeed wonder which of the few images I have created on Flickr have actually violated the ToU.

1. The photos include three screenshots from ingame graphics for the “World of Warcraft” game. This is a free usable feature and Blizzard (the game creators) has encouraged people to make screenshots.

2. The other photo is based on one of my personal emails which I have received including a special offer for the above mentoined game.

3. The last photo is a selfmade photo collage of my university and a statement.

As I may add, according to the Wikipedia, a screenshot is the following:
“A screenshot, screen dump, or screen capture is an image taken by the computer to record the visible items on the monitor or another visual output device. Usually this is a digital image taken by the host operating system or software running on the computer device, but it can also mean when a capture is made by an external device such as a camera or something intercepting the video output of the computer.”
In fact, screenshots are digital images, which resemble photos in the same way. What I see in my personal email box is being documented by myself in a screenshot and shared with other people whenever I want as it is my right to do this.

In the end, I have not seen a single copyright violation. Further, screenshots are not graphics or cartoons, but they may include such as part of the screenshot. On top of this, the images are not culled off from any web source and are not used as design-elements in some website layout.

I am open to this matter, and have no problem in trying to solve the entire issue with you. However, it would have been nice to inform me about problematic images as it is a more nicer measurement for handling customer care services. What if I would have signed up for a Pro-Account and paid Flickr? Would you handle this case different? I’m very interested in your answers and our further dialogue.

Best regards,
Mike Schnoor