Image: Connected PressUpdate: Flickr is recovering the pictures and is providing the very poor man free Pro membership until eventually 2036.
Update 2: Yahoo asks us to add this statement: "Yahoo! is happy to share the Flickr group has absolutely restored a member’s account that was mistakenly deleted yesterday. We regret the human error that led to the mistake and have worked hard to rectify the situation,
Microsoft Office 2010 Key, including reloading the entire photo portfolio and providing the member with 25 years of at no cost Flickr Pro membership. Flickr takes the trust of our members very seriously and we appreciate the patience shown by this member and our community. Flickr will also soon roll out functionality that will allow us to restore deleted accounts more easily in the future."
Previously:
This is awful. Flickr accidentally deleted the entire account of one its users -- a paying,
Office Standard, Pro user no less --,
Office 2007 Professional Plus, removing 4 years worth of pictures. What happened is that the user reported another user for lifting his copyrighted pictures and Flickr accidentally deleted his account instead of the infringing user's.
Whoops.
What about backups?
Apparently there aren't any. The pictures are gone.
Flickr apologized profusely and offered him four years of free of cost Pro memberships but that's hardly much of a consolation. We want to be even-handed and find Yahoo an excuse or a mitigating factor but can't think of any.
Here's the blog post explaining the situation (be warned that the headline has an F word in it, which is hardly surprising) and more details from the Observer.
Very Related: Yahoo,
Office 2007 Pro Key, Not Facebook,
Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, Is Bleeding Flickr To Death →