How does Flickr’s getLicenseHistory handle photos with no license changes?
I’m using the Flickr’s getLicenseHistory API, which returns the license history for a photo.
The example response shows a photo with two license changes: from all rights reserved to CC BY 2.0, and back again. Both of them are accompanied by a date_change
timestamp:
<rsp stat="ok">
<license_history date_change="1295918034" old_license="All Rights Reserved" old_license_url="" new_license="Attribution License" new_license_url="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" />
<license_history date_change="1598990519" old_license="Attribution License" old_license_url="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/" new_license="All Rights Reserved" new_license_url="" />
</rsp>
The API also includes a note about photos with no license changes:
If no changes have been made to the license, it returns the original license as old_license (and an empty new_license).
I wanted to understand what this would look like in practice, so I did some experiments with one of my photos.
When a photo has no license changes
This is the API repsonse for a photo with no license changes:
<rsp stat="ok">
<license_history
date_change="1733215279"
old_license="All Rights Reserved" old_license_url="https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/10710266545556-Using-Flickr-images-shared-by-other-members"
new_license="" new_license_url=""
/>
</rsp>
The timestamp 1733215279
is the date I uploaded the photo to Flickr, because that’s when I set the initial license.
This is the API response after I updated the license for the first time:
<rsp stat="ok">
<license_history
date_change="1746095208"
old_license="All Rights Reserved" old_license_url="https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/10710266545556-Using-Flickr-images-shared-by-other-members"
new_license="Attribution License" new_license_url="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/"
/>
</rsp>
The new timestamp 1746095208
is the date I updated the license – the timestamp of the original photo has now vanished from this response.