Given the situation in the USSR as described by the poster...

...is not correct, we should follow our standard policy on posting content by other photographers.

You can find discussion about the Soviet copyright laws and whether or not material is considered public domain in e.g. Wikimedia Commons.

I guess one of the issues here is also whether the photographer wants to make money with their photos or not. Cheapskate shipowner or not, I bet there are still amateur or hobbyist photographers who would just be happy if someone liked their photos and wanted to use them for something, perhaps even give credit to the photographer. My photographs from Shipspotting.com have appeared in a few news articles in the past few days and I'm just happy to see my name next to them. They could have picked any of the other freely-available pictures, but at least now they chose, in my opinion, the best...

Of course, I fully understand why someone would not want to hand over their photographs for free.

Following received from "AntonioGtz" by email to Shipspotting:

That's interesting information - thank you for sharing.

I'm also getting the impression that there is some hidden agenda behind this bashing.  Maersk is not the only big shipping company that has not started a wide-scale transition to LNG. I'm pretty sure their next set of newbuildings will be at least LNG ready. There are still issues such as lack of infrastructure when it comes to gas fuels.

None of their (many) containership newbuildings is equiped with enviroment friendly LNG propulsion like other companies do (i.e. TOTE, Finnish company 'Containerships', CMA CGM ...)

How many LNG-powered container ships are in service or under construction?

Interesting to read that they have lost the towed ships to use not adequate materials in order to save a few thousands euros, and if the foundering was to be "performed" to reduce the recycle costs?

The ships had already been sold to the scrapyard which was expecting to make profit out of the scrapping. Nothing would have been gained from sinking them intentionally.

Please, please, no more categories!

Agreed. What next? Vessels underway? Vessels moored at pier? Vessels going backwards? Vessels turning?

Anchored ships can be categorized by ship type.

Tempera is probably a good candidate for an FPSO conversion. Diesel-electric power plant and large corrosion margin due to ice strengthening. She's also in good condition, having been owned by a Finnish oil company.

Tempera and Mastera are not Arctic shuttle tankers, though. Their ice class is only 1A Super.

I'm a bit sceptical that cargo liqufaction would sink a vessel originally designed to carry liquid cargo...

I would rather stick to the international standard than come up with something new that's only used in Shipspotting.com.

Two potential issues about the copyright banner:

- If one is added to the photograph, is the JPEG file re-compressed? Even at maximum quality settings, this may result in unwanted loss of quality.
- Would it be possible to opt out from the copyright banner (e.g. checkbox while uploading) if the photographs are covered by e.g. a CC license?

Bob, won't the most interesting photographs eventually appear on the other lists, e.g. most viewed of 7 days? Of course, as the timespan gets longer, the lists tend to become dominated by disaster porn.

Anyway, would counting only registered members generate enough hits to those "really interesting" photographs to make the top viewed list somehow better? I mean, it's quite unlikely that a large number of registered members would randomly stumble across the same interesting photograph while browsing the database or even the list of latest photographs uploaded on the site. Of course, you could have a "look what I found" thread on the forums, but what would prevent a member from posting links to their own photographs there and claim they are interesting? Also, a positive feedback loop (people looking only at photographs on the top views list) could also make the list more biased to certain ship types or cliche photographs because the most active members would likely have their favourites (the so-called "tiny steamboat plague" in historical ships magazines).

By the way, if an older photograph receives a large number of hits, will it show on "most viewed of 24 hours", or is the category only limited to photographs posted within these past 24 hours?

I can't help but wonder why they didn't go for more realism, but instead decided to "replicate" a blocky LEGO ship.

The only way to "protect" your photographs is to hide them in your basement (or, as I like to say, "sit on them") and never show them to anyone. Personally, I like the opposite, so I publish all my material under a free Creative Commons license.

I'm sorry, but I don't get why it's a problem if someone's photo gets more hits than yours, whether it's by sharing, comments or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't a competition and I'm just happy to post my photos here.

...and I'm happy that ShipSpotting provides a possibility of thumbnail linking. I often use this functionality when I need to support my post with a photograph, mine or someone else's. It's ok if members want to opt out from this, but please don't remove the functionality as a whole just because some users think this is some kind of a pissing contest.

Unless one is a gun-obsessed American member of the National Rifle Association, there is in my opinion no such thing as a "cool" gun.

You are entitled to your opinion as we are entitled to ours, but calling someone "obsessed" just because of (healthy) interest in something you don't care about is not right and proper.