There is a way to deal with this...

[RDKirk]

...and it's not to complain on a forum.

Toyota U.S.A. has removed a photo feature from one of its Web sites and apologized to Flickr photographers whose images appeared on the site without their permission.

Flickr users recently noticed that a Toyota 4Runner site was running some outdoorsy photos that appeared to be copied from Flickr. A Flickr forum soon lit up with gripes about the Toyota site, including complaints from photographers who said they hadn't given permission for their pictures to been used in an ad.

http://www.pdnpulse.com/2009/11/toyota-apologizes-for-using-flickr-photos-in-suv-ad.html

[Dennis_Hammer]

As often as this happens how can flickr users keep getting bent out of shape. Stop using flickr its that simple. How a photographer can expose themselves to image grabs from that site is beyond me, but I guess if either you don't care or you just want to be able to be appalled someone took your image its the place for you. That said I don't use flickr, but they must have some way to secure the photos if not a large watermark would prevent this type of thing also.

[5Dmaniac]

After some of my pictures were hi-jacked from another forum, I pretty much decided that I would not post pictures anywhere anymore with some very few exceptions. It is just not worth the aggravation.

[birdfromboat]

Agreed.

[Todd Lambert]

Yeah, I fail to see where this is caused solely by using Flickr. It's called the Internet, and posting photos on it, are permanent and open to all. That is the name of the game, knowing that, if you decide to continue to post photos then you accept the possible consequences.

The Music industry, the TV industry, the Movie industry, you name it... any and all content creators are dealing with the exact same base issue involved with the Internet. You either understand it and play along with it, or you don't and keep your content from appearing on it. In the end, that's all that can be done.

In my opinion, the most prosperous will be the ones that use the Internet, not run from it.

[RDKirk]

The difference here is that a major corporation is doing the thieving. Not a theoretical legal difference, but definitely a practical legal difference.