Flickr Restricting Download Sizes for Free Accounts

In an effort to curtail users from treating Flickr as a free cloud storage platform, Flickr is restricting download sizes for free account holders.

Since 2004, Flickr has been known as an online community championing the ability to share photos online. With both free and paid accounts available, users upload images to the site and can share them with friends, family, or the public. However, as the site grew and changed hands multiple times over the years, current owner SmugMug has made a number of service updates. Not all of these changes have been warmly received, including reducing the amount of storage for free accounts from one terabyte to 1000 photos.

Now, Flickr has announced its latest and perhaps most significant change will arrive in the May 15th service update. Although clearly stated in the terms and conditions, Flickr does not intend for users to use the site as if it’s cloud storage, however, many do.

That’s where the issue arises as far as Flickr is concerned. Nothing stopped free account holders, even professionals, from dropping large files at full resolution either for storage or sharing with clients.

With the May 15th update, free accounts will be restricted from downloading original and large-size images. This update will apply both to the free account’s own content as well as content shared by other free members. While users will still be able to upload photos of all accepted file sizes, free account holders will only be able to download medium and smaller-size photos.

However, Flickr Commons members and Creative Commons imagery will not be affected. As Flickr describes, “Creative Commons-licensed photos will remain available to download in all sizes—unless they’re set to private. Flickr Commons members are exempt from this change and will retain access to all download sizes.”

Is it worth noting that free account users will still have access to their high-resolution files, but they will need to request to download this content through Flickr’s Data section in Settings, rather than through typical means.

Flickr hopes that the update still allows users to share their images freely for viewing with family, friends, or just the public, and participate in the groups or challenges, maintaining the community aspect of the site while also preventing abuse and use of the service as free cloud file storage.

The news of this update has been met with mixed responses, with the community taking to sites like Reddit to voice frustration. Some users see the change as understandable, saying they don’t mind it because they just use their account for viewing or sharing smartphone size photos anyway. While others are distraught, calling the change wrong — a punishment on all free account users for the abuse of some.

However, those who still want to use Flickr as cloud storage can upgrade to a Flickr Pro account. With Pro, users have unlimited full-resolution photo sharing and backup on all devices, ad-free browsing, and a dashboard with detailed stats and privacy settings. Pro accounts start at $10.44 a month, with discounted plans bringing the price down to $5.54 monthly with a two-year commitment.

Image credits: Flickr