I don't think so as all my photos on flickr say that but they also say "© All rights reserved" the public bit only means that they are available to view by anyone visiting the site you still need to check the copyright and ask the photographer for permission to use them.

Then again this is only my take on it and i'm not a copyright expert.

"This photo is public" means exactly that - it is viewable to the public. It does not mean that it's available for download and use by the public.

Users can determine what licence is applied to each of their photo's. To understand these you need to have a good read up on the various licences in operation on Flickr, most of which work under the Creative Commons principle.

As an example, all my photo's on Flickr carry a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons Licence. This means that you can use my pics:

* if you use them for non-commercial purposes,
* if ensure any of my photo's you use are fully credited to me
* if do not make derivative works from them.

However, before you even think about using my photo's, I'd expect you to do me the courtesy of making contact and asking my permission first!

[flickr.com...]

[creativecommons.org...]

Syzygy

[edited by: Syzygy at 12:54 pm (utc) on Sep. 7, 2007]

Thank you for clearing up what "This photo is public" means.
So the best thing to do is ask someone if I can use their photos then!

Thank You!

I see no problem using such if the owner of the pics does not mind

Read the site's TOS, this will give you an idea whether the owners of the pics have given their consent for that.

No it wont. Each and every Flickr user is allowed to set their own licence determining if/how their pics can be used!

See link above for an explanation on the Creative Commons licensing structure used at Flickr.

Syzygy