Free Republic

After 'Obama Joker' debacle, Flickr changes takedown policy September 2, 2009 Flickr came out looking like the bad guy when it removed an image of President Obama portrayed as the Joker from "The Dark Knight." Onlookers accused Flickr of having a "political agenda" and being a "bully." For the most part, Flickr has stuck to a retort along the lines of: Sorry, kids, but that's the way the law works. But the Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site has since retreated, at least in one respect. Flickr revised its takedown policy Tuesday to be more clear when something has been removed as a...

To deal with the mounting copyright issues swirling around video and other content online, a start-up founded by some respected Silicon Valley executives is taking a novel approach: combing the entire Web for unauthorized uses.... ...The start-up, which was founded last year and has been in "stealth" mode, is emerging into the public eye today, at a time when some media and entertainment companies' frustration with difficulties identifying infringing uses of their content online is increasing. The problem has intensified with the proliferation and increasing usage of sites such as Google Inc.'s YouTube, which lets consumers post video clips. Media...