StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

How To Steal Content And How To Make Money With The Stolen Content: Stock Index Online UK/US Is At The Forefront Of Creative Writing

Recently someone working for the magazine VISUELL copied some sentences from Will Carleton´s Photo Archive News, without crediting the source. They later corrected the mistake, but only after we started some riots. Earlier, a well-respected industry analyst rewrote an article of a well-known trade publication, without crediting the source. All that needed to be said regarding stolen content and regarding making money with the stolen content had been said here in this place earlier in detail. I won´t repeat that.

Video Blogging, Vapnik´s Support Vector Machines, Video-On-Demand and Bayesian Networks

In the last days C|Net has published a bunch of articles on Videoblogging and Video-On-Demand:

• "Netscape co-founder eyes video blogs" about the new startup of Mark Andreessen (24 H Laundry): "A blogging and social networking site for consumers that will include video [...], 24HL, as in "airing your laundry," is largely funded by its founders, according to one Silicon Valley venture capitalist. [...] Since retiring from Netscape, Andreessen has lived the life of a gentleman entrepreneur. [...] More recently, he, along with Netscape alum Mike Homer, launched the Open Media Network, which caters to broadcasters, independent filmmakers and average people who want to distribute their films on the Internet for free."
• On the edge, the former articles also mentions the "TiVo with search"-tools of Gotuit Media. More about this in "Dawn of a new ad age" at the bottom. Similar an article ("IBM's 'Marvel' to scour Net for video, audio") on Marvel, IBM´s new internet search technology for footage, which is based on MPEG-7: "The 'How Much Information?' survey conducted by the University of California at Berkeley determined that television stations worldwide produced about 123 million hours of total programming in 2002. Of the total, 31 million hours represented original programming, which translates to 70,000 terabytes of data.[...]
  The prototype system can scan through a database of more than 200 hours of broadcast news video and use 100 different descriptive terms to classify and identify scenes. IBM hopes to come up with a list of 1,000 descriptive labels by April.
  A query takes about two to three seconds. Marvel is based on the MPEG-7 data format, but it can search on any standard video format."
• "Video content set free on Web" about the new startup of J.D. Lascia, Ourmedia ("the grassroots media revolution"), which hosts video for free: ""We're still at an early stage of the multimedia-rich Web. The Web is not going to be Web logs and text; it's going to be people posting video and podcasting and taking part in the citizens' media that's just starting to explode." Ourmedia's ultimate goal is not to amass a huge collection of video, but to establish open standards that will make vast multimedia libraries and archives across the Internet accessible through any number of social networks, blog tools, portals and media-sharing sites. [..] "One of our goals is to create an open format for video so that there are no more format wars," Lasica said. "It's crazy right now. It's confusing to people when they can't play video, and it's very frustrating.""
• "Google readying Web-only video search", only a week old, but already widely quoted, about the old and new plans of Google-Video: "Longer term, Google is preparing a payment system for a premium video service that would let people pay to watch full video clips. Google is talking to several top-tier content providers, including Hollywood movie studios, to gain agreements for aggregating their video and selling premium or pay-per-view access. "The ultimate endgame is streaming video, otherwise Google can't get video advertising dollars," said one source. "They have to figure a way to get video into their world to capture those dollars."" Similar "Yahoo, Google turn up volume on video search battle".

Miscellaneous

Getty Images launched the "Getty Images Media Manager", available as WorkGroup Edition and Enterprise Edition (Link); JupiterImages reports the results for Q I/2005 (Link) and Google started Video-Blogging/Vlogging (Link here ["video blogging remains in an embryonic stage"] and also there).

Besides this, Phototalk celebrates the first anniversary (started April 11, 2004).

Posted by Andy

The Digital Photography Weblog: Another Blog...

What some people were expecting: the new blog "The Digital Photography Weblog" (written by Amit Malhotra/Dallas; belonging to Jason Calacanis´ Weblogs, Inc.) went online a couple of days ago. Let´s see and wait... . The subtitle "A picture is worth five megapixels" is obviously not a too bright idea moving us to streams of tears of truly felt admiration. But maybe we all can read other and better stuff than the streamlined crap "XYZ reports today that ABC will report tomorrow that yesterday 123 reviewed the new digital camera xyz" of the other digital photography hardware blogs (which means loosely translated: "Hey, you DSOAB, click here to read the reprint of that press release I discovered yesterday, cause I gotta pay my rent with these Google Ads"). Hopefully from someone with a personality and a viewpoint and not that Copy´n´ Paste-attitude.

Another new blog (?) which recently came to our attention is "Cameras – Digital Camera Reviews, Comparisons and Ratings".

New Blogs On The Block: New Digital Image

John Schott, creator of the blog Camera|Iraq and Director for Media Studies Concentration and Media Studies (MEDA) at the Carleton College, Minnesota, recently created a new blog called "New Digital Image".
The blog -- Schott is the producer of "American Photography: A Century of Images" -- is dedicated to moblogging in general (actually to teach his class) and brings up some interesting links.

Again: Blogs, Photo and Copyright

After his comment here and few emails later regarding the topic "Blogs, Photo and Copyright"/"Blogs, Photo and Copyright: The debate continues
[Copyright => Garbage?]"/"Copyright Protection -- How to Register Photographs" (a discussion that started with the post "Fair Use for photos on the web and in blogs: a modest proposal to avoid a major battle" by Jason Calacanis), Bahar Gidwani of Index Stock gives his view in "Industry Comment #6--Art is a private, personal product": "When people “rip” our art (Web slang for stealing it”), we should object loudly!"

Iraqian Frontline and the Images from Moblogging Soldiers: Final Epilogue

After some weeks of investigating and reporting "Iraqian Frontline: Images from Moblogging Soldiers, Part I - Part VIII" (read all these stories in the Category "Iraq|War: Photos + Reports" and additionally "Iraq|War|Photography: The Meta Level") John Schott of Camera/Iraq ("Camera/Iraq: New Website Launched") recently wrote in "Soldier Photos":

Camera/Iraq has a continuing interest in soldier photograhy from the Middle East, and we would like to collaborate in the creation of an online exhibition of such work. We were first inspired by excellent early efforts at Phototalk... .
Unfortunately, while scouring soldier photo-blogs or cam-phone collections for that one-in-a-hundred outstanding image, Phototalk encountered pictures lifted from other sources, frequently work by professional photographers. This shouldn't be surprising, really, since the pragmatic goal of a photo-blog is to visualize one's military experience in Iraq rather than to sell photo rights or garner professional notoriety. Content and context trump artistic provenance in soldier photo-blogs.
For a photo editor, however, borrowed pictures creates the possibility of mis-attribution. Contacting soldiers by email has proven difficult because they are otherwise engaged in fighting a war, often gather and present work as a unit rather than exclusively from their own "personal vision," and frequently don't encourage communication by including email addresses or are so flooded with messages that they can not respond. Plus, of course, soldiers are under new scrutiny about what images they are placing online.
Still, the notion of editing an online exhibition is compelling. Please email us if you would like to undertake or contribute to such a project.

This is not entirely the complete story: there is a difference between telling your own war history in your words using (sometimes) other peoples images as an illustration for your text and the (how to say: very euphemistic) categorical statement: "Hey, I took these pix, I created them", which is just a stupid lie. On the other hand, time has shown that at a least one army press officer (with a certain background in photography) had taken private photos with a quality and meaning far beyond the day. It is the old question "who is doing what and how". An undisputed claim: 95 percent of all people reading this blog would present/moblog their own images and never ever other people´s images, except under very special circumstances.

John Schott writes: "The pragmatic goal of a photo-blog is to visualize one's military experience in Iraq". This is absolutely right, but who can visualize your own military experience, your daily life, better than you yourself, in your special situation? No one needs to steal pictures for that.

John Schott writes: "Content and context trump artistic provenance in soldier photo-blogs." With stolen photos? Blogged together with complete book chapters "borrowed" from famous writers? All that without a clarifying explanation?

Where (as a soldier) is your very own experience, your "content and context", if you only cite and quote and/or grab and steal for "visualizing" your "military experience"? Is is still your experience you present (as a moblogging soldier)? Borrowed presentations and visualizations of personal experiences? Do they coexist? What is the next step? Borrowed personal experiences? Where is the real life?

In The Case 'People vs. SIO'...

Stock Index Online (SIO) finally generously has agreed (read the Update section at the bottom of the page) to rewrite the review about Digital Railroad. Read the new entry: "All aboard the Digital Railroad". The old entry was terminated.

Questo blog è chiuso per ferie, fino all' 8 Agosto 2004

[© Grace and Katie]

Chiudo, per un circa settimana, questo weblog. Infatti, a mio modesto parere, per scrivere bisogna prima pensare e, i blogs spesso ti tolgono lo spazio per pensare.


(Hint for the person/CEO/BizDeveloper etc. who is constantly looking for "DigitalVision 2003 revenues", ""Image source" 2003 revenues" or "Index stock imagery 2003 revenues" and other good stuff-- Google hits are a tricky thing, especially with your really nice -- and static -- IP! So, no one has to work for Pixlogic, the company ("Visual Search") with Venture Capital from the CIA, just to know who you are...).
=:-)

Bahar Gidwani, CEO of Index Stock Imagery, Starts Personal Business Blog "DIMdump"

Breaking news at least for the relatively small Stock Photo Industry. Bahar Gidwani, CEO of Index Stock Imagery, has started what we would call a "personal business blog": DIMdump, about

Digital Image Management, Digital Image Marketing, or just a lack of light and knowledge! Bahar Gidwani, CEO of Index Stock Imagery, thinks there is a lot to think about, talk about, and learn in the emerging world of digital imaging.

Finally there might be some progress in this world.

Remember: five or four years ago Jim Pickerell wrote that North Americans are spending more money for toilet paper than stock imagery (*see footnote). Today, one might add that in Central Europe a mid-sized cheese producing Creamery Company has just the same annual revenues as Getty Images.

However, the difference is: it may not be very fashionable to work for a company selling cheese. But there is a certain transparency in this business: cheese market size, who buys which kind of cheese where, competitor analysis, there is no hidden or secret information, thus enabling countability and predictability, even for small and/or starting companies.

In contrast the Stock Photo Industry: there were only a few sources of information, and not a single really independent information source not related to a company with specific interests. The two big companies are keeping their secrets. Regarding journalism in this area, what we had was a monopoly of information, and sometimes, sad to say, even shady and slightly suspect**; what we see now to begin is a diversity of information hopefully enabling more transparency. All this with blogging software. Some won´t like that.

Bahar will earn a lot of sympathies for his efforts. And if the CEO of Index Stock Imagery starts his own blog: we won´t have to wait long until the next CEO of another company will start his/her blog***. We bet some others won´t start a personal blog; simply because they have nothing of value to communicate, something that would not look like the 15th edition of the company´s PR Blabla.

There are some others blogs who have recently started, all dealing with the Stock Photo Industry, mainly with the focus to report some kind of "business news". So far, none of them has a sustainable business model other than republishing press releases, mixed with some "Ahs" and "Uhms". This might change if Jason Calacanis finally decides to open the big PHOTO BLOG which would be a perfect place to mix bits of information for consumers, professionals and the industry. But this a question of how to architecture the business modell for something like this -- accurate to a millimetre.

But for us the big question in the background still is: after all the companies (actually four) who came and went trying to give photographers more than a 50/50 cut (and including big marketing guns and a huge sales force) -- will it work in the future? This question is still unanswered. That some companies failed doesn´t mean it won´t work finally. So again (and again, we are not related to them or know them personally), big sympathy and thumbs up for this startup called TheImageFile.