It's obvious that Obama is off limits and Bush is fair game. Funny how that works.

The reason it works is because they are a privately owned company and as such have the right to their own opinion and are allowed to disallow anything they want.

That being said, they did violate one of their own stated goals, that being “We want to help people make their content available to the people who matter to them”.

Their lame excuse of copyright-infringement does not stand up in light of the fact they allowed similar pictures mocking Bush on a Time cover.

If Yahoo is sincere about their claim: “We very much value freedom of speech and creativity.” They would repost Alkhateeb’s work.

They don’t even necessarily have to apologize, but at least back up their assertion of valuing freedom of speech.

They do offer a paid service and therefore have to live up to their side of the agreement as do those using the service. It doesn't appear that Alkhateeb has a pro account (at least not at this time), but I bet many of the people who had their comments eradicated did.

And this isn't all on Flickr. What if they are telling the truth about the take down notice? It isn't like they fought it, but if they got one, who sent it out? If it was Time, then why hasn't Time done anything about all the other Time covers (like that question has to be asked)?

Good point. You would have to ask who would benefit from having the photo retracted.

Maybe there wasn't any notice and Yahoo just used that as an 'excuse' to remove something they found objectionable. They must realize how objectionable censorship is to a lot of people.