Riddle me this, Batman. If this is all about hating on Obama detractors and right-wingers, why is Flickr still hosting thousands of anti-Obama and anti-Democrat images that can easily be found with these simple search terms:

nobama
obama socialist
anti-democrat
impeach Obama

In fact, there are a bunch of derivative works of the Obama joker image in those results. You know what the main difference between those and the one that gotten taken down is? The one that gotten taken down was being plastered all over causways, bridge abuttments, national TV and the internet, and those weren't.

Maybe, just maybe you can set aside all the insanely irrational conspiracy theories for one moment and think about why an image that's been duplicated hundreds of thousands of times and gained international notoriety might attract a little more negative attention from a copyright holder than a bunch of images that never left a site that only a subset of internet users ever visit.

I don't know why the right thinks that being perpetually offended and outraged at things that don't exist is a good way to go about rebuilding its influence in America, and, frankly, at this point, I don't even care anymore.

Since everything you say is a lie, what you just said must not be true, and therefore you're wrong. I assume you'll respect my new approach to "discussions" with you given that it's exactly the same standard you apply to the president?

I hope you aren't inferring that the image was perfectly legit speech until it started being used as speech. I also hop you are not attempting to claim that the free speech was only valid until a cause you either support or do not support takes a hold of it.

Then your hope is well-founded. I don't think the image should have been removed, and I think the justification given was flimsy. I waded into this disaster in response to the people who were whining that it was some democratic/liberal conspiracy to silence Obama opponents (despite the plethora of both derivative and original anti-Obama/anti-democrat works readily available on the site).

I'm not arguing that Flickr was right to take it down, I'm just arguing that there's no reason to believe they're lying about their motivation for taking it down and even less reason to believe it's some crazy conspiracy to silence right-wing opinion on the site.

As to the thread above regarding anti-Bush images on Flickr: I didn't say I didn't see any, I said I didn't see many. There may have been more in the past when Bush was president, I don't know. It would make sense seeing as how people were probably more interested in parodying and scorning him when he was president than they are now that he's a private citizen.

I flipped through several pages of results and it appears only one of those parodies is hosted on flickr, and even then it wasn't the actual parody, but a photograph of a parody painting someone did. We're not interested in "Time parodies", we're interested in "Time parodies hosted on Flickr that haven't been removed".

I searched Flickr for "Time parody". There are several, but the majority of results seem to be unrelated to the text of the search or are actually Time-relevant non-parodies, several of the results appeared in response to this "scandal", and most of the remaining parodies were silly things like people's dogs shopped onto fake Time covers.

There's just no evidence there was any political motivation here. None. There are plenty of anti-democrat and anti-Obama images on Flickr. A bunch of people are running around playing the crybaby victim card over this because they think bawling about non-existent oppression is going to score them political points. I disagree with the image's removal, but the people making this out to be some politically motivated hit job on this kid are being ridiculous.

I just flipped through the first 15 pages of images and didn't see any that appeared to be derivatives of copyrighted works. Perhaps you could help me out by indicating where in that enormous mess of search results I can find an example of what you're looking at.

And, as an aside, the vast majority of images weren't critical of Bush at all... they were just pictures of him at various functions or pictures of an aircraft carrier. I even flipped through some of the groups, like "anti-bush league", and found mostly anti-Obama and anti-Democrat images....

It's not a parallel case at all. They didn't shop him to insult him or make a political point or accusation, as is the case here, they shopped him to have goofy visuals to go with their "love him/hate him" juxtaposition.

Flickr has no problem with copyrighted images of Bush being photoshopped.

Evidence please.

Oh, the irony.

...leaves few other conclusions.

No, it doesn't. Since DMCA passed Slashdot has hosted links to dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of all sorts of media-rich websites behaving in exactly this same, cowardly way. Youtube pulls parody videos and songs all the time because they're afraid of the potential liabilities. So, given the history of these online media cmopanies, which is more likely? That somebody's abusing DMCA and copyright laws or Flickr is being cowardly about them, or that this is some conspiracy to thwart "right-leaning" (from a left-winger...) free speech?

There's still tons of GWB photos out there that make this Joker image look rather tame.

That doesn't matter. Flickr claims they took it down because they believe it was a copyright violation, not because it's offensive. The standard, then, is not "how nasty are the remaining Bush images", it's "how many of the remaining Bush images appear to violate copyright law".

Furthermore, the image seems to have sat their quite happily until a bunch of teabaggers took it and started vandalizing public property with it, shoving it into the media spotlight.

And your evidence of this is... what?

First of all, that's not a picture of Bush as the Joker. Second of all, why in the world would anybody find that offensive?

but Obama is clearly off limits.

Flickr says they took it down over copyright concerns. Are you:

a) Calling them liars
b) Someone who didn't bother to RTFA
c) Trying to play the victim card and cry about oppression that doesn't appear to actually exist

when Time did this very thing to a photo of Bush

Proof? I'm finding exactly nothing of the sort, and all similar searches lead to a cartoonist's drawing published in Vanity Fair.

Seems Flikr's owners are Democrats; or maybe they're Republicans afraid of backlash

Or maybe jumpy business people worried they'll get in the middle of a legal mess they'd rather not get involved in.

But why stick with more obvious motivations when you can turn everything into a retarded political pissing match, right?

Have fun with your crazy conspiracy theories Mr. Anonymous.