Yahoo! have been mopping up the PR fallout from the stripper show that occurred during the Yahoo! Taiwan 2009 Hack Day (if you missed the story, check out Violet Blue or Simon Willion’s posts).
Well, the plot thickens as the most damning photos of the event have mysteriously been removed from public viewing. Flickr user CocoChou had taken probably the most damning photos of the the stripping event and uploaded them to his Flickr set of the Hack Day under a Creative Commons license.
However, the 4 photos – which many blogs were embedding and linking to – have been made private in the past few hours, although curiously all of the other 72 photos from the event are still public.
It’s not clear whether Yahoo!, which of course owns Flickr, has put pressure on CocoChou to remove them or whether he removed them independently of any interference. However, it’s difficult to think of reasonable motivations why someone would remove these 4 particular photos from their original 80 and keep the rest up. I have, of course, emailed CocoChou to find out – and I’ll update this post if/when I hear back.
Fortunately I downloaded copies of these photos before they were removed, and in the public-spirited nature you’ve all come to know and love, I’ve re-uploaded them to my Flickr account. Of course I am able to do so legally as they were originally released under a Creative Commons license, which I have perpetuated:
