Kodak’s bid to own your pictures

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You couldn’t make this up. But I’ll let Dan Bricklin (a keen digital photographer) tell the story…

The idea of a “Wi-Fi” camera seems exciting but in trying to understand it I found that it comes with a big boat anchor — the photos are uploaded to Kodak’s site. But you don’t really own the pictures. If you ask they will sell your photos to you and deliver them to you on a CD (no downloads!) which contains your entire collection of pictures! According to their site you can’t even specify which photos — you have to pay according to how many photos are in your account!

Since the site and rules may change there’s what KodakGallery (formerly Ofoto) currently says: “When you order an Archive CD, your entire photo collection will be preserved on CD. Photos are saved as full-sized JPEGs in their original resolution. Archive CDs are priced according to the total number of photos in your account.”

While the idea of having your photos automatically moved from your camera to the Internet sounds wonderful, you lose ownership of your own pictures. Or maybe you shouldn’t think of them as yours — they effectively belong to Kodak and you get only controlled access. As much as Kodak seems to want to leave their silver-halide heritage behind they seem to be stuck in the old business model of making money when you process the picture, when you print the picture and whenever you want to print it again. It’s another example of how hard it is for a company to change its basic nature.

This is part of the larger trend that is fighting to keep control. The record industry doesn’t want to let you have any control over the bits you buy and Tellywood wants to wrap everything in a very tight DRM straightjacket. These are a business premised on control and they seem unable to change their basic nature. For them it makes a lot of sense to fight the future as long as they can. They have no better option and if they are smart they are taking cash out so when their business evaporates they can retire.

What if VisiCalc had been patented…

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One of my proudest possessions is a copy of the original version of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program which Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston wrote for the Apple II (and which was the reason that machine began to sell like hot cakes: people wanted the software and, when told they needed an Apple machine to run it, bought one of those too). If you look at Excel (and, before that, Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft’s first effort at a spreadsheet, Multiplan) you’ll see that each was essentially just an attempt to do a better VisiCalc. And of course they were able to do it because VisiCalc wasn’t patented. Dan Bricklin has been musing about this on his Blog.

Daily life in Iraq

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From Slate…

One contractor bid $70,000 to fill a few potholes. Maj. Benjamin Busch of College Park, Md., working with the Civil Affairs Group in Ramadi, estimated that the work should cost $5,000. The contractor protested that he had to buy his own cement trucks because no one was willing to rent to him if it meant entering Ramadi. He then had to hire guards who insisted on driving their own vehicles. He paid local officials for “licenses,” he paid the sheik in charge of the local tribe where he was to work. He then had to persuade the insurgents on each street where he was working to accept a payment in exchange for leaving him alone. And his work crew and guards insisted on driving back and forth from Baghdad each day, resulting in about three hours of actual work per day. Busch told him to forget it, but he agreed that such a maze of payoffs and arrangements was typical. It was almost impossible for an outside contractor to work in the city, and local contractors spent more time negotiating with the complex power structure than doing actual work. Hence, $70,000 for a $5,000 job.

Determined to complete at least one job on the streets, Busch brought in two tanks to guard a work detail. Insurgents (without guns) walked around the tanks, gathered the workers together, and told them they had one hour to get out of town. The workers left.

The blogging revolution

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Well, well. A Guardian/ICM poll brings some unexpected news…

The extent of the personal publishing revolution has been revealed by a Guardian/ICM poll showing that a third of all young people online have launched their own blog or website. Millions of young people who have grown up with the internet and mobile phones are no longer content with the one-way traffic of traditional media and are publishing and aggregating their own content, according to the exclusive survey of those aged between 14 and 21…

The Guardian has a leader on the implications of this phenomenon.

Mary Meeker of Morgan Stanley claims that 27% of US internet users read Blogs.

CNET is claiming that there are “more than 14 million” blogs in existence and another 80,000 being created each day. It has now compiled the usual fatuous list of the ‘Top 100’ Blogs. Sigh.

More: From a report of a presentation by Dave Sifri of Technorati…

Technorati is tracking 18.9 million weblogs, and seeing a doubling in these numbers every five months.

70,000 new weblogs are created every day; about one every second. 55% of those bloggers appear to still be active 3 months later. About 8% of those blogs are spam.

Looking at use, Technorati are seeing over 1,000,000 blog posts every day, with clear spikes around newsworthy events.

High profile blogs like Boing Boing and Gizmodo have similar levels of attention to mainstream media sites such as Reuters and the BBC. Traditional media companies are now beginning to integrate blog content into their offerings, with the Washington Post and others announcing their entry into this space today.

The use of tagging in blog posts is increasing, with almost a third of posts today including at least one tag.

En passant… it’s funny how these numbers never quite match up. CNET has “more than 14 million” Blogs, with 80,000 being created every day, while Technorati is monitoring “18.9 million” and seeing a mere 70,000 new ones a day. Hmmm….

Blawgs, aka lawyers’ blogs

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Interesting piece in the New York Times. Quote:

A survey conducted by Blogads.com, which administers online advertising on blog sites, and completed voluntarily by 30,000 blog visitors last spring, found that 5.1 percent of the people reading the blogs were lawyers or judges, putting that group fourth behind computer professionals, students and retirees. The survey also found that of the 6,232 people who said they also kept their own blogs, 6.1 percent said they were in the legal profession, putting lawyers fourth again, behind the 17.5 percent who said they were in the field of education, 15.1 percent in computer software and 6.4 percent in media, said Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads. He conceded that the survey was hardly scientific, but argued that at least it undermined the popular image of the blogosphere as dominated by antsy teenagers and programmers in their pajamas, tapping away at keyboards all night.

Copyright thugs seek to break up family

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

The heavy armor of the music industry’s legal department continues to clank forward, but a few people are starting to stand up in front of the tanks. One is Candy Chan, sued for alleged copyright infringement by a batch of record companies. The subject of the investigation actually was Chan’s then 13-year-old daughter, Brittany, aka “Spicybrnweyedgirl.” According to a p2pnet report, when Chan refused to settle on behalf of her daughter, the record companies regrouped and now want to go after the teenager directly — but first they want the court to push Mom aside and appoint a legal guardian in this matter.

Pump and Dump report

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Fascinating site revealing what would have happened to your money if you’d followed those share tips that come in spam email messages. I don’t have to tell you the outcome, do I?

I thought that I would realize temporary windfalls on all penny stocks, but then see big losses. Instead almost ALL of those stocks I added went up a few cents max, then dropped like flies the next day. So much for short term gains.

Official: most recordings not available

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From a fascinating report by the US Council on Library and Information resources. Here’s an excerpt from the summary:

Survey of Reissues of U.S. Recordings finds that most U.S. historical sound recordings have become virtually inaccessible—available neither commercially nor in the public domain. According to the report, the rights to 84 percent of historically significant recordings made in the United States between 1890 and 1964 are still owned by someone and are therefore protected by law. For most pre-1972 recordings, protection comes in the form of state, not federal, law until 2067. Because recordings cannot be copied and distributed without permission of their rights holders, the only legal way to obtain a CD of a pre-1972 recording is through a reissue. Yet the study found that rights holders have reissued—or allowed others to reissue—on CD only 14 percent of the pre-1965 recordings they control. Thus, most historically important sound recordings are available for hearing only through private collectors or at research libraries that collect our audio heritage and have the equipment to play obsolete, often-frail recordings.

And the significance of this? Simple: it provides evidence for the claim that the current ‘strong’ copyright regime keeps a large proportion of creative works inaccessible.