Buy Mugs with Photos of Strangers' Kids — Legally
Getting a coffee mug with a child's photo on it isn't just for grandparents anymore — now it's a way to demonstrate online privacy risks. Two Dutchmen, journalist Dimitri Tokmetzis and artist Yuri Veerman, have launched Koppie Koppie, an online shop that sells photo mugs with a twist: They all feature photos of strangers' children, which is perfectly legal thanks to Flickr license settings.
Koppie Koppie, whose slogan is "Someone's kid on your favorite mug," sells 61 different mugs, all of which have pictures of random children lifted directly from photo-sharing service Flickr. (Some of the mugs have had photos removed due to requests from parents.) The duo say that it's sort of a joke — yes, they're making money (about 90 cents per mug), but it's mostly to demonstrate the carelessness with which many people share sensitive personal information.
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Flickr users have the option of letting anyone use their photos freely, even for commercial purposes, under certain Creative Commons licenses. (The default Flickr photo setting is "all rights reserved," which bars re-use without written permission, and some Creative Commons licenses bar commercial re-use.)
As soon as a Flickr user who has selected one of the more Creative Commons options posts photos — whether they're of dinner or children (the two should be mutually exclusive, unless you are Jonathan Swift) — anyone else can use them for any purpose they see fit.
"Freely sharing something on social media does not mean you have nothing to hide," Tokmetzis and Veerman wrote on their website. "After something has been shared, it is terribly difficult to determine the extent to which it's still yours, and the extent to which others are allowed to use it."
Tokmetzis wrote in the online newsmagazine De Correspondent (translation here on Medium) that he and Veerman got the idea for the coffee mugs after Flickr announced plans last fall to sell poster-sized versions of especially noteworthy photos.
Photographers who had put their images under Creative Commons licenses that permitted free commercial re-use would not be paid. Flickr backed down after public outcry, but that didn't change the legality of what it had planned.
It's not only Flickr that worries Tokmetzis. Facebook and Google also reserve the right to re-use images and videos uploaded to their platforms, including subsidiaries such as YouTube. (Flickr itself is owned by Yahoo.)
"The moment you post something on Facebook or YouTube, you enter into a contract with that company," Tokmetzis wrote (English translation by Jona Meijers). "From then on, they're free to benefit from your material in any way they see fit, mainly by selling ads around it, but in some cases by selling your data, or using your avatar and other personal information for commercial purposes."
If you are one of the unlucky parents with your child on a Koppie Koppie mug, you can e-mail the artists at delete@koppie-koppie.biz, and they will remove it. Otherwise, check your Flickr account and modify your license settings — at the very least, Tom's Guide recommends that you mark your photos of your children "noncommercial." Otherwise, organizations less scrupulous than Koppie Koppie will be able to profit off them.
"Koppie" has a few potential meanings in Dutch. It could refer to a photocopy, to a little head (such as a child's), or even to a haircut, but in conversational terms, "koppie, koppie" means "think, think!" If you share your family's photos on Flickr, think carefully indeed.
Marshall Honorof is a Staff Writer for Tom's Guide. Contact him at mhonorof@tomsguide.com. Follow him @marshallhonorof. Follow us @tomsguide, on Facebook and on Google+.
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