I suspect that it is very, very rare for any unaltered photo to go into any type of fashion magazine or web site. I suspect every picture that I see in a magazine or on the Internet has been altered.
Good news sites might be a bit more careful to present unaltered images, but even news sites with high standards generally permit cropping and correcting for things like brightness, contrast, and hue.
Exactly where do you draw the line on what is acceptable and what isn't. If you insist that all altered photos be labeled as altered, then pretty much every photo that you see is going to have the tag on it, thus rendering the tag meaningless.
But really, there isn't really that much difference between photoshopping skin tone or a waist line and doing a studio setup that flatters the model in ways that are not natural.
My mother was an elementary school teacher. This reminds me of the story she tells about a kid who came up to her on the playground and whined, "He hit me back!"
>>They don't come any slimier than Pirate Mike Masnick.
We really need to get some fresh trolls. Your average third grader does a better job of name-calling. This guy can't even get follow the troll's October style guidelines. In October it is supposed to be just "pirate mikey" with no capitalization.
Are these guys really the best industry shills they can come up with? The recording industry must be in even worse shape than I thought.
There are some important things that Google is doing that are different from the RIAA/MPAA methods:
1) Google is offering customers a convenient way to get what they want at a reasonable price.
2) Google is allowing its business partners to make a fair profit.
3) Google doesn't make it a regular business practice to its best customers and business partners.
4) Google is not spending tremendous amounts of political capital trying to destroy the Bill of Rights in order to protect its own antiquated business model.
I wonder what position the record industry would be in today if they had partnered with the original Napster to provide this type of service.
The situation is actually much worse than "no evidence." There is actually evidence to the contrary. Many of the things that the industry is proposing would actually hurt the RIAA/MPAA companies themselves. And there is in fact evidence to support that position.
I would love to see the companies that leave the CoC join up to form a new organization that tries to create a favorable climate for forward-thinking and job-creating industries.
Of course, in thirty years we would probably be writing articles about how the F-TJ-C is just about protecting legacy industries, but at least they would have a decade or two of productive work before that happened.
The trend noted in the article makes some of the recently negotiated exclusivity deals like the one that shut Barnes & Nobles out of e-distribution of DC comics a bit more ominous.
Frankly, I am surprised that Amazon is still pursuing those type of arrangements. They have reached such a dominant position in the e-publishing market that they really don't need exclusivity deals that lock out competition. Exclusivity arrangements are going to have no real effect other than drawing the eyes of FTC monopoly cops.
To me the whole thing about blurring out logos on T-shirts and ball caps is crazy. obviously an over reaction to hyped up trademark attorneys. It seems to me that if you put an item out there to be worn and someone takes a picture of someone wearing it then that would be the very definition of fair use. Can you imagine how hard it is to put together candid photos for a high school yearbook when every company out there is marketing logo shirts to high school students?
But of course we will continue to have to put up with this nonsense as long as there is a ton of money to be made by attorneys filing overly aggressive trademark claims and judges who are happy to play along.
>>but try as I might, don't see anything here more than the above "??????" of Step 2.
You, too could be a major media company executive! If you can't imagine a way for an artist to make money other than selling shiny plastic discs, then you are fully qualified for employment with any of the major RIAA labels or MPAA studios. You have already had all of the creativity and ability to see beyond what worked in 1978 completely beaten out of you, saving your potential media employer the huge sums of money such brainwashing efforts require.
Will we be allowed to feed the Trolls on the new site? They are going to be hungry because they will have to come up with a whole new set of mindless comments. "Broadbrush" and "Mike's a Pirate" probably won't work over there. Come to think of it they don't work that well here most of the time, but that never stops them. Perhaps they can use "This is just another give it away and pray model." It probably won't be accurate in most cases, but with trolls accuracy doesn't really matter.
>>I'm fairly sure that legislation is not the answer, but one wishes that there was some way for people to be held accountable for their actions...
How very, very un-American of you! Do you realize that that if we started holding everyone accountable every Wall Street banker would be unemployed and Washington DC would have to be vacated? Can you just imagine if corporate executives had bonuses that were actually based on performance? The horror!
>>The current model has near zero distribution costs and it is time the price reflected that savings.
And BREAKAGE! Let's not forget about the fragile nature of .mp3 files that break if they are dropped! Part of the standard recording industry contract still deducts the cost of breakage from the artists' share. It originated back in the day of vinyl records, but it is still charged even for downloads. Breakage was a dubious charge even in the day of vinyl records. Why on earth should breakage be deducted from the artist's share? Wouldn't it have been more reasonable to attribute breakage to the distribution costs? But the industry's goal then as well as today is to cheat the artist at every turn, so at least they are consistent.
I interpreted B&N's move a different way. I see B&N saying that it believes that electronic distribution of comic books and other materials is much more important than physical distribution, at least in the long term. B&N hoped to strike fear into the hearts of traditional media companies who love their physical distribution channels and think of the electronic distribution as incidental to their main business.
We have had a lot of third parties develop in the US in the last 150 years. What has generally happened is that if the third party got to the point where it became a serious threat, then its message gets adopted by one of the major parties. I'm not saying that is a good thing, it is just a description of what has happened.
We see that to some extent going on with the Occupy movement as the Democrats seem to be embracing it. The question is whether the Democrats will really embrace it or just give lip service. Embracing the movement would probably mean giving up those big campaign contributions and the revolving-door jobs with big industries that they are currently in bed with.
As the restrictions become tighter and tighter the situation becomes more and more like screwing down the safety valve on a steam engine. Eventually there is going to be an explosion that does a whole lot of collateral damage. The industry should remember that when a steam engine explodes the first one that is taken out is the engineer who was screwing down the safety valve.
Perhaps a steam engine analogy is archaic, but so is the concept of distributing media on shiny plastic discs.
Quite possibly, but honestly it is good to see the trolls come back to Capistrano. I was worried by the lack of trolling lately.
I think we really do need to trolls. I prefer the higher quality trolls that actually make valid points. They contribute to the quality of the discussion. I even value the feeble trolls that have dominated the traffic lately. Even the mindless and feeble trolls let us know that xPAA takes TD as enough of a threat that they are willing to give us some attention.
Google bought Motorala in large part because it gave them a war chest of patents to defend themselves against other cell phone OS producers such as Apple and Microsoft.
Unfortunately that type of defense is useless against patent trolls because non-producing entities by definition don't produce anything Motorola/Google can counter sue for. All IV has to do is keep throwing weak patents against the wall until a judge in East Texas lets one stick.
Getting a worthless patent or two invalidated doesn't really matter to IV because they have a lot more worthless patents to draw on. The real danger that they face is making enough big companies like Google mad at them that software patents get tossed out as invalid.
None of these stories about how "AAAA is killing BBBB" ever explains one simple thing. Why should the businesses, employees, and artisans of the BBBB industry be entitled to guaranteed jobs and income? The stories always mourn hardships of the wholesome, righteous people of the BBBB business, but they never celebrate the creativity and new opportunities of the AAAA industry. Change is always hard on someone, but in a true free market progress is driven by new industries and technologies replacing old ones.
Should we all still be burning whale oil for lighting and listening to our music on gramophones?
On the post: Couple Pushes For Law To Limit Photoshopping Models; Because It Hurts Young Girls' Self-Esteem
Good news sites might be a bit more careful to present unaltered images, but even news sites with high standards generally permit cropping and correcting for things like brightness, contrast, and hue.
Exactly where do you draw the line on what is acceptable and what isn't. If you insist that all altered photos be labeled as altered, then pretty much every photo that you see is going to have the tag on it, thus rendering the tag meaningless.
But really, there isn't really that much difference between photoshopping skin tone or a waist line and doing a studio setup that flatters the model in ways that are not natural.
On the post: Mass Infringement Lawyer Complains About Too Many People Challenging His Lawsuits
On the post: YouTube Now Helping Artists Sell The Scarce
Re: Re: Re: Re: bleh
We really need to get some fresh trolls. Your average third grader does a better job of name-calling. This guy can't even get follow the troll's October style guidelines. In October it is supposed to be just "pirate mikey" with no capitalization.
Are these guys really the best industry shills they can come up with? The recording industry must be in even worse shape than I thought.
On the post: YouTube Now Helping Artists Sell The Scarce
1) Google is offering customers a convenient way to get what they want at a reasonable price.
2) Google is allowing its business partners to make a fair profit.
3) Google doesn't make it a regular business practice to its best customers and business partners.
4) Google is not spending tremendous amounts of political capital trying to destroy the Bill of Rights in order to protect its own antiquated business model.
I wonder what position the record industry would be in today if they had partnered with the original Napster to provide this type of service.
On the post: UK Government Admits That It Has No Evidence (Zip, Zilch, Zero) To Support Its Claims For Draconian Copyright Law
On the post: Yahoo Dumps US Chamber Of Commerce Over Its Extremist Position On PROTECT IP
Of course, in thirty years we would probably be writing articles about how the F-TJ-C is just about protecting legacy industries, but at least they would have a decade or two of productive work before that happened.
On the post: Does Amazon Want to Monopolize The Entire Publishing Chain?
Frankly, I am surprised that Amazon is still pursuing those type of arrangements. They have reached such a dominant position in the e-publishing market that they really don't need exclusivity deals that lock out competition. Exclusivity arrangements are going to have no real effect other than drawing the eyes of FTC monopoly cops.
On the post: Is Getty Guilty Of Trademark Infringement For Every Photo It Has That Shows A Trademark?
Re:
But of course we will continue to have to put up with this nonsense as long as there is a ton of money to be made by attorneys filing overly aggressive trademark claims and judges who are happy to play along.
On the post: Announcing Step2 -- Our New Platform For Helping Creators Succeed
Re: So... your plan is to come up with a plan?
You, too could be a major media company executive! If you can't imagine a way for an artist to make money other than selling shiny plastic discs, then you are fully qualified for employment with any of the major RIAA labels or MPAA studios. You have already had all of the creativity and ability to see beyond what worked in 1978 completely beaten out of you, saving your potential media employer the huge sums of money such brainwashing efforts require.
On the post: Announcing Step2 -- Our New Platform For Helping Creators Succeed
Re:
On the post: Should We Pass A Law To Stop Yelp From Harming Chain Restaurants?
How very, very un-American of you! Do you realize that that if we started holding everyone accountable every Wall Street banker would be unemployed and Washington DC would have to be vacated? Can you just imagine if corporate executives had bonuses that were actually based on performance? The horror!
On the post: One Of The Most Successful NY Startups... Is Dedicated To Infringing Activities (According To The Entertainment Industry)
Re: Re:
And BREAKAGE! Let's not forget about the fragile nature of .mp3 files that break if they are dropped! Part of the standard recording industry contract still deducts the cost of breakage from the artists' share. It originated back in the day of vinyl records, but it is still charged even for downloads. Breakage was a dubious charge even in the day of vinyl records. Why on earth should breakage be deducted from the artist's share? Wouldn't it have been more reasonable to attribute breakage to the distribution costs? But the industry's goal then as well as today is to cheat the artist at every turn, so at least they are consistent.
On the post: Barnes & Noble Doesn't Get Digital DC Comics, Throws Hissy Fit
On the post: Pirate Party Building Up More And More Support: 9% Nationwide In Germany
Re:
We see that to some extent going on with the Occupy movement as the Democrats seem to be embracing it. The question is whether the Democrats will really embrace it or just give lip service. Embracing the movement would probably mean giving up those big campaign contributions and the revolving-door jobs with big industries that they are currently in bed with.
On the post: The Only Way To Stop File Sharing Is To Stop Private Communications
Perhaps a steam engine analogy is archaic, but so is the concept of distributing media on shiny plastic discs.
On the post: Apparently The Creative Class Is Dead Because No One Works At Tower Records Any More
"There is none so blind as he who will not see."
On the post: GEMA Strikes Again: Demands Licensing Fees For Music It Has No Rights To
On the post: Intellectual Ventures Sues Motorola Mobility For Infringement; Guess Who's Trying To Cause Trouble For Google?
Re: Re: Intellectual Vultures
Quite possibly, but honestly it is good to see the trolls come back to Capistrano. I was worried by the lack of trolling lately.
I think we really do need to trolls. I prefer the higher quality trolls that actually make valid points. They contribute to the quality of the discussion. I even value the feeble trolls that have dominated the traffic lately. Even the mindless and feeble trolls let us know that xPAA takes TD as enough of a threat that they are willing to give us some attention.
On the post: Intellectual Ventures Sues Motorola Mobility For Infringement; Guess Who's Trying To Cause Trouble For Google?
Unfortunately that type of defense is useless against patent trolls because non-producing entities by definition don't produce anything Motorola/Google can counter sue for. All IV has to do is keep throwing weak patents against the wall until a judge in East Texas lets one stick.
Getting a worthless patent or two invalidated doesn't really matter to IV because they have a lot more worthless patents to draw on. The real danger that they face is making enough big companies like Google mad at them that software patents get tossed out as invalid.
On the post: Radio Is Killing Music
Should we all still be burning whale oil for lighting and listening to our music on gramophones?
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