Posts Tagged: Sharing

Business / Technology — No Comments
30
Nov 08

Copyright doesn’t mean don’t use

When the Creative Commons forged a more progressive look copyright law, enabling content creators legal power to elect specific use of their works, a cultural movement ensued. Until that point, copyright law reflected a historical component of intellectual property protection vital to commercial endeavors, but presented obstacles to reuse. Any of the various combinations of the Creative Commons license permit specific opportunities to a consumer of the assets, turning copyright into a layman’s device, clarifying for both creator and consumer a license that is compressible and deliberate. Copyright doe not mean “don’t use,” it just presents additional barriers because it lacks the varietal nature of the Creative Commons. Copyright is very specific, that the author of the content holds all rights and in order to use it, one would need to contact the author for permission or license. This appears to be a great inhibitor and makes a great compliment to the more explicit Creative Commons licenses. As the Creative Commons site explains, “Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved.”

So, while it is possible to permit some level of sharing and remixing in the end the license still reserves rights to the work. Copyright on the other hand reserves all rights. In cases where you want to know and be in control of your work, copyright is what you want.

While people tend to understand that they usually own the copyright of their creations, they do not realize the limitations of restitution if the work is not registered. Specifically in the United States, failing to register your work limits the amount of damages one can seek or be awarded in court. While my living is not made based on my photography, I have chosen to explicitly copyright my work, which includes registering it with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Several sites discuss how to do register work with the U.S. Copyright Office. (e.g. ASMP and Peter Krogh) More recently, there is a great series that Photoshop User Magazine is running, “The Copyright Zone” and some great posts over at Scott Kelby’s blog.

The online copyright registration tool is your typical solution that was constructed to the letter of the requirements, which is to say that most people will find it rigid and cryptic. There is a lot of documentation to help bolster your confidence, but at some point, you simply need to take the plunge. Here are three tips that made my life much simpler.

First, if you decide to upload your work, you are sure to notice the warnings of 30 minutes per upload. This might cause some panic depending on your connection to the Internet, but you need not be concerned. Interestingly enough, no one mentions that you can upload many times. In practice, this means any specific upload is limited to 30 minutes, but you can continue to upload as many times as is required to transfer your collection. Each upload is logged and displayed as part of your submission. It takes a few minutes for the system to show each transaction (my guess is they scan for malicious code), but if you do not see your uploaded work, then they never received it. You can call or email for verification or upload again to make sure. For those of us registering an entire years worth of unpublished work, this is important!

Screenshot of one of my submitted applications.

Second, you will read about the format of submission. Some people advocate for individual images and yet others talk about contact sheets. Having called the U.S. Copyright Office for guidance, apparently, a digital contact sheet is acceptable. This really simplifies the registration of unpublished works. I used Adobe Lightroom v2 to generate digital contact sheets (4 columns, 5 rows) with the filename and date taken under each image. All the guidance says that the image needs to be clearly visible on small displays. I chose to export at 300 dpi and in JPG format. At 300 dpi the contact sheet will effectively show 20 images to a page while allowing the individual image to render beautifully at over 580 pixels in the longest dimension. Digital contact sheets allow for fewer uploads, while presenting the work in high quality legible form. If you are a Lightroom user, you are welcome to the template I used.

Screenshot of Adobe Lightroom digital contact sheet.

Third, the online copyright registration site recommends using ZIP compression as a means of uploading many files. While using zip on JPEGs yields less space savings than on other files, I used it to simplify my uploading. I numbered them 1 of X to ensure my logic was clear. Additionally, this will allow a copyright examiner to reconcile uploads just in case I submitted an archive twice. Finally, WinZip is offering aggressive compression mechanisms, specifically for images. I used legacy compression to ensure compatibility. Compression programs have come a long way, but in this case, interoperability was the priority.

WinZip settings

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. My comments here are a documentation of how I approached registering photographic works and may not apply for your use. Please consult an IP lawyer or the U.S. Copyright office if you want to verify you are following acceptable procedures.

Culture / Relationships / Technology — 2 Comments
13
Jan 08

Photo albums are all but dead

Photo albums used to be the family bible, visually recording the event of people, places and events. It required the acts of photographer, editor and album constructor. It was a labor of reminiscence and duty. As the holder of the photos and the negatives, only they had the artifacts to construct the story. As viewers we enjoy impressions among the context, artifacts of a trip are embedded, mementos of the event. The event of constructing the photo album is all but dead – it too has been abstracted.

The transformation of the photographic world to a digital reality moved the activity of album construction to the computer. Initially people focused on recreating what they had in the real world, the physical photograph. It turned out that it was more expensive per print than traditional means, but the rationale was that someone only printed what they wanted. Enter stage right, the photo editor who traditionally used contact sheets or prints now filtering with computer screens and postage stamp LCDs on cameras. Dramatically reduced, the cost to take pictures results in higher volumes of images for review, the editor continues to filter. Photos, now files, need to be backed up to CD, DVD or external storage. To work with photos beyond the basics requires software of all shapes and sizes that helps make the most of where we have evolved to be. We live in an age of visual abundance, requiring constant editing, leaving the activity of visual story telling to the dedicated few.

Forget not the magic of the Internet! Enter stage right, jogging next to digital cameras, photo-sharing websites. While the photo album continues to be nourished by older generations, the common people are looking to recover the social aspect of their visual record. The current state of the art is Flickr. Heavily edited, socially aware photo sharing, with family, friends and everyone. Screen shot of my Flickr sets The construction of the Flickr account requires the same photographer, editor and album constructor, but add to it uploader, annotator, taxonomist, commentator, moderator and more. Image distribution casts a wider net. Instead of just family and friends physically present with the photo album, anyone can browse the gallery and experience a different kind of story, one favorited and commented by the known and unknown. This introduces two pressures. First, who has access to someone’s images what and do they care. Second, these photos are a representation of someone’s impressions and moreover their view – the editing they applied to select a specific set of photos for others to experience. Now that literally everyone sees them, what is it that they intended to say? Filter, filter, filter. Far fewer images are seen and when they are, they lack the context of the human touch that made photo albums something of reverence and reminiscence. Just over the hill, on the other side of the coin, everyone enjoys the endless visual content that the society has constructed, defining the societal view and the visual trend. The slow death of the analog photo album leaves us somewhere different.

Digital photo frames reintroduce the album in a Harry Potter device. Pictures often cycle through allowing the viewer to see more than a single photo. The i-mate Momento 100 is a ten-inch digital photo fame that is wifi-connected and mates with an online service to bring much, much more to photo frames. Any shortcomings are quickly forgotten when someone experiences the magic. Momento Live is the site that mates with the frame allowing the frame’s owner to subscribe to feeds, Flickr or others, and have those photos automatically downloaded and updated on the frame. Screen shot of Momento Live web siteIn addition, the frame has an email address and MMS interface. Send an email with a photo attached and the image graces the frame. The owner is no longer the album creator. People of their own selection enter the mix. Add a Flickr feed generated from a search and view endless images of <insert keywords here> by people you may never know. The Momento points in the direction of recapturing and evolving society’s notions of the photo album, the photo sharing experience. The frame becomes the magical portal into moments experienced by the individual and others, remixed to impress upon the viewer. If only we were able to capture the human touch and replay that. The story is becoming more interesting, but lacks the meaningful connections people create when they share face-to-face.

Send a photo to my Momento!

Business / Culture / Relationships — 5 Comments
1
Nov 07

Socially critical thinking

Social software maps the networks we already know. Presumably, the goal is to have the systems we interact with enable or inform us about something or someone we do not.

Recently I have been beating a drum with a colleague on the lack of critical thinking people bring to bare, regardless of environment – digital or real – and how we might support more thoughtful interactions. The disturbing trend is that people communicate critique through disengagement and silence. Anyone who has enjoyed a college-level art class can affirm that the most humbling and beneficial moments come from open critiques.

Your work, something you sweat over for hours, is hanging up against a wall along side those of your peers. Artists hang their work on the wall, stand back and review in hopes to see what they might be missing. The things we like and dislike about art often thought to be subjective, that taste is something unique to us. If this were true then more people agree than disagree on esthetically pleasing artistic expression. Go to an art critique and watch as people judge both on the technical execution and on the way the piece makes them feel. For the artist, it is likely the first time anyone has interacted with them around their art; it is the beginning of a dialogue. When there is agreement, the artist has communicated something so well that everyone remarks. If the reaction is not in-line with the artist’s intention, then it is an opportunity to learn and adjust. Art is, at least in part, communication. For whatever reason, we do not ask our peers to hang Power Point slides up on the wall and reflect. Ask a developer to be honest about their anxiety of participating in a code review. We have created a culture of quite, passive, secret thoughts.

People need to be more critical. Not negative, critical. We have an opportunity every day to contribute to the reality we share, if even only to compliment. Why withhold so much in fear that we might offend? Try starting with what you liked and then follow up with your suggestion. Venture out and express how you feel the next time someone asks you for your thoughts. Do not just say, “looks good,” because that is the same as silence.

When you organize jour [sic] social world solely around affinity, then you get an endless hall of mirrors. – Adam Greenfield, Author, Adjunct Professor at New York University, from an interview with Zachary Jean Paradis, Sapient, interview.

Social spaces are about the participants and their connections. If they are unable to show us something other than what we know, they have failed. Collecting the list of people we know is an ego game, whose meaning is short lived. Part of addressing this challenge is in valuing the diversity among us – go beyond gender, race and include thought. Love the person who disagrees with you, because you have the opportunity to learn something new. Be more critical of what you see. Find others that are willing to be more critical of you. Decide that a hall of mirrors, while familiar, is not as interesting as what other people are showing.

Culture / Relationships / Technology — No Comments
29
Sep 07

Ambient connections create more socially aware networks

Twitter is a centerpiece to techi-discussions where everyone shakes in amazement that such a simple application could become so integral to people’s lives. It is the simplicity, content and medium that supports such phenomenal adoption. More specifically, the interfaces to Twitter are minimal – website, email, feeds, Twitter Tools (extensions to Twitter) and most importantly text messaging. The website supports initial account creation, management, historical archive and message broadcasting, but in truth, like every other website would require a user to show up to participate and benefit. Extending their interface to email offers the few people who have a computer but no mobile phone a way to engage, but it is the text messaging that lets Twitter reach down and touch you in your pocket. There is too much information and yet participating in Twitter only increases it. So, why are we experiencing such compulsion?

Twitter has been described as micro-blogging and it is not a terrible coin. Twitters are character limited training people to marshal life updates into pithy messages. If one made a valuation of a blog post that journals a person’s day-to-day activity, the value in any given twitter is at most proportionally as small. However, considered in the context of the same person’s daily twitters and an individual’s understanding is enhanced. Consider one person’s twitters in their twitter-network cocktail and the twitter-log takes on additional meaning, meaning only understood by the receiver. Throw into the mental mix that one person does not necessarily need to know another in order to follow them – supporting fantastical senses of potentially very distant individuals.

Blog-trolling a last weekend I remember running across Matt Hatem’s reflection on the social sixth sense. He actually ends up meeting a friend that he might not have otherwise through Twitter. Interestingly, Matt’s very real social connection enhances his relationship with Twitter. Regularly, Twitter is a simple way to keep up with his network virtually. He is left to construct what one buddy is up to based on what he knows of them and what the message said. In his example, though, Matt bridged the relationship into the real world, which is far richer and now forever part of how Matt understands Twitter – it connects him with people he knows – virtually and in the flesh.

Matt also points off to Clive Thompson’s Wired article How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense. Clive offers similar anecdotal support that small messages understood cumulatively have meaning, meaning that changes what we understand about the people we know. The fact that these messages show up on a mobile phone – a intimate device – offers urgency of interruption and often a visually simple rolling log of what is what in the network. The mobile phone has become an ambient device that creates more socially aware people, in some cases, actually getting them away from tiny keyboards and meeting up close enough to touch.

Business / Culture / Relationships — No Comments
16
Sep 07

The flatter we get the more Jelly we need

By now, we have all been told the world is flat. If you missed it then, I am telling you the world got flat a while back and nothing will ever be the same. That spells opportunity for almost everyone and in areas that go beyond finding the lowest cost labor or outsourcing non-critical parts of the business. Quite literally, businesses are driving to be more than globally present, but integrated to act as one even if that one is made up of many.

There is a chapter that seems to be overlooked – leading and managing the globally distributed team. As far as I can tell, experts are rare. Conferences often have dozens of consultants that can help do it better, highlight common pitfalls, and yet will admit that everyone is still learning and many see it as an upfront cost of their future business. The mythical twenty-four hour workday is something requiring the highest precision and, from my own experience, exercises leadership muscles that draw upon core energy from intuition and values. Regardless, we are all experiencing a world where the focus is distributing talent often exemplified by the mobile worker, someone who is almost entirely self-sufficient without the traditional office space. Self-sufficient says nothing about productivity or impact. In fact, the mobile worker might save enough money for a business that less still ends up being more – the mobile worker gets less done, but costs less overall doing it. Reflecting in that light and there is nothing like setting out to fall short of remarkable.

This past week NPR ran a story on Jelly, a gathering of professionals working from a participant’s home letting people get the collaborative social aspects of a dynamic workplace without all the political overhead associated with the traditional workplace. Anyone is invited to Jelly and any profession goes – all you need is to remember that people are not gathering to hide in the corner alone, an open mind and suddenly you may have some of the creative and technical types missing from your day job. There is something utterly compelling about this approach to the workplace. No one makes it to the top alone and if your cats are your only collaborators, the mountain might grow faster than you climb.

As we distribute our work across the world, how do we Jelly? Without this level of exchange, we risk our creativity dying from the limited recirculation of thoughts. HP saw value in forcing a portion of their workforce back into the office. Innovation labs found in academia and industry tout the benefits of face-to-face interactions. Jellys could reach beyond the work-at-home’s working together to businesses looking to work better together if even far apart.

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