Serious concerns about Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day terms

NOTE: We have sent a copy of this to the WPPD team, and will be happy to include their response. Were it not for the time-sensitive nature of the material, we would have done so prior to publication.

I was psyched for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day this year. I packed up a bunch of film and headed to a friend’s birthday BBQ and brought an extra camera along in case anybody else wanted to try. They were good sports and let me make blurry pictures of them, and we all had fun. I picked up the 7 rolls of 120 I shot yesterday, got home, and got down to editing. I picked an image to upload to this year’s WPPD gallery, loaded up the submission form, read the rules governing submissions, and was extremely disturbed. I sat down and went through them, line by line, with Katie Cooke, who was also ready to upload an image. This is what we found:

 

(1) WPPD is a non-commercial event, open to everybody, everywhere in the world. Participation in WPPD is completely free; there are no submission fees, and no charges for exhibiting on the WPPD web site.

Great idea! Pinhole photography, fun, not making the artists pay, sounds good! But as always, you have to read the fine print:

 

(5) [the photograph] can be of any subject.

Well, not really. See rules 7 and 10.

 

(7) [the photograph] must respect common decency and human rights (no pornography).

Common decency where? Sweden or Saudi Arabia? If you aggregated everyone’s ideas of common decency, you wouldn’t be able to submit much. Female hair? Nope, no-go for some Muslims. Soles of feet or shoes? Serious insult in Thailand. Female breasts in America are “indecent”, in Europe, they’re fine. Europe has more people. Which is more common between them?

Then there are the people like us, for whom the entire concept of censoring everything so as not to offend anyone, anywhere, goes against common decency and sense. Not offending anyone is simply not possible. Hell, photography itself is against common decency in some parts of the world. Congratulations, you just invalidated WPPD’s entire existence. If you really believe this, it’s time to quit photography altogether.

And part of our definition of common decency is that people not imply an inherent equation between pornography and disrespect for human rights.

This also contradicts rule 5 above.

 

(9) [the photograph] must not have been previously published.

a) Why? This is not a rhetorical question.

b) If they are actually trying to grab at least a window of exclusivity—which alone would prevent either of us from submitting work, because it seems unreasonable and pointless—this isn’t going to do it. You are following this rule if you upload it to WPPD, and then your own site, or Flickr, 10 seconds later. What exactly does this accomplish? Nothing, other than setting up an arbitrary and useless hoop to jump through. Who are the WPPD team to tell anyone in which order they may upload things?

c) What, precisely, does “published” mean? In what media with what audience? If you put it in a protected area of your web site, or a photo sharing site, does that count as published?

 

(10) Each author must be able to provide proof that the submitted photograph is not contrary to other people’s fundamental rights. (The submitter must ensure that all allowances to photograph and publish pictures showing personal objects have been obtained by the models and/or owners of pictured objects.)

a) The first section of this rule is problematic. You want proof of a negative—which is generally impossible—for something that’s undefined? “Fundamental rights” can mean anything.

b) This is so poorly worded that it means that permission is required to show pictures of objects, but not of people, and the permission has to be granted to the owners of the objects. We don’t think this was the meaning the organizers were looking for, and would suggest they meant, “The submitter must ensure that all permissions to photograph and publish pictures showing people or personal objects have been obtained from the models and/or owners of pictured objects.”

Assuming that the rule is intended to mean that it is the photographer needs these permissions, we run into some more trouble:

i) Permission to depict “personal objects”? Again, we’ve got another term that’s so vague as to be meaningless. As potential submitters, we have no idea what this means, and therefore have no idea which images are acceptable to submit and which are not.

ii) Permission isn’t defined, either, which is a real problem. In the US, it’s legal to photograph anything in public view (with a few exceptions for military bases and the like), because in public, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Therefore, one could argue—as many have successfully done in court [most recently, see Nussenzweig v. diCorcia, US]—that by simply being in public, one is implicitly consenting to have their person and accompanying objects photographed.

This seems to be a wholly unreasonable demand. If you wanted to submit a photo of a street, would you have to get an OK from the owner of every car, building, and shop? What about litter? Each piece belonged to someone at some point. Does the fact that something is abandoned make it no longer a personal object?

It seems the only way to know for sure that you’re not running afoul of this rule is to make sure that the only things depicted in the photo you submit are yourself and things that you own. This contradicts rule 5, “[the photograph] can be of any subject”.

 

(11) To be submitted, a so-called “submission” must include both a scanned photograph and a completed Submission Form.

This is fine in principle, but use of the word “scanned” is unnecessarily limiting and confusing. Rule 4 states, “[the photograph] can be made by using any photographic material: film, paper, liquid emulsion, B&W, color, and any photographic process.” “Any photographic process” includes digital, so why a scan? What about people who shoot their negatives with digital cameras because they don’t have scanners? Does the requirement of a scan mean that digital isn’t actually allowed? It’s included in “any photographic process”, because digital is a process takes in light (photo) and puts out an image (graph), but it isn’t named explicitly. And they said “and any photographic process”, not “or”. So what’s the deal?

(This is the problem with having an incomplete list of things in a set of rules. If you’re not going to list everything, why bother enumerating anything at all when “any photographic process” covers it nicely? When everything you list is analog and digital isn’t mentioned, it raises questions.)

 

(16) Members of the coordinating team have authority to interpret and apply all necessary rules to all submissions received and may use their descretion and judgment in deciding which images to accept for the exhibition. Their decisions are final.

So basically, here’s all the rules, but they don’t really matter because we can bend them any way we want, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

 

(18) The coordinating team reserves the right to modify the rules of the operation if they judge necessary; in such an event, decisions of the organizers are final.

This is dangerous, unacceptable bullshit! The coordinating team could retroactively change the usage rights to say, “ha ha, we own the copyright to your images now, sucker!”. Or reverse rule 1 and say, “surprise, there are entry and exhibition fees now, and since you already entered and exhibited, you owe us $1,000!”.

ARE YOU INSANE??!? No thanks. If you expect me to play by your ill thought-out rules, you’d damn well better do the same.

 

(20) The act of participating in the WPPD implies whole acceptance of all rules and conditions presented here.

What exactly constitutes “participating in WPPD”? Is it uploading a lensless image made on pinhole day to the WPPD web site? Is it participating in a pinhole workshop on the date of WPPD? Is it making any lensless image whatsoever on the date of WPPD?

This stunning lack of specificity means that they could be trying to say that any act of lensless imaging that occured on 29 April, 2007, are bound by these rules. This, combined with rule 18, is insanely dangerous. Not that it’s likely, but they could attempt a rights grab at an image made on the day by someone who’s never even heard of WPPD! This confusion could have been avoided by rewording this point to something along the lines of, “By uploading an image that is accepted for display on the pinholeday.org site, you agree that you have accepted all rules and conditions presented in this document”.

A serious legal concern with these rules is the dangerous combination of rules 18 and 20.

By accepting all the terms and conditions, you agree that you accept any possible changes to the rules that might be applied at any point in the future, and applied retroactively. While we don’t expect that the WPPD team would ever be evil, it’s foolish to sign up to something like this. You could, for example, agree to the current terms (even the very confusing ones) and later find out that yes, someone else now owns all the rights on your image, and so you are in expensive breach of contract with another organisation, to whom you have sold exclusive print rights.

Agreeing to something so flawed and hoping that a loophole like this will never be exploited is naive.

 

We each had a lot of fun shooting on Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day, but you can bet your rent money that we won’t be submitting anything under these terms. I sincerely hope this gets straightened out for next year, because it’s an otherwise extremely cool event.

So where to go from here? We encourage the WPPD team to re-think the rules. The basic idea of WPPD is, in our opinion, both excellent and exciting. We think we should not go off on a “WPPD SUCKS!” campaign. While this year’s rules deserve to be scrapped, the event itself deserves to be celebrated and supported. If the rules don’t sit right with you, we encourage you to write a polite message to the WPPD team at the designated email address, support@pinholeday.org, and tell them that you’d like to see them changed for next year. Or, they could make the one possible good use of rule 18 (the rules are whatever we say they are) and retroactively change this year’s rules to something sane.

Nicolai Morrisson & Katie Cooke

 

UPDATE, 3 March 2007, 11:30pm GMT -5 (US EST)
We posted a copy of this to the f295 Pinhole Forum at the same time it was posted posted here (about 9 hours ago) as it seemed relevant. I just discovered that the thread has been deleted. It was located at f295 Pinhole Forum -> Thoughts and Observations: General Discussion -> Serious concerns about WPPD terms (last part now dead).

No word from the WPPD team yet.

26 thoughts to “Serious concerns about Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day terms”

  1. What. The. Hell?

    Glad I haven’t submitted anything yet. I don’t plan to.

    So who hired a recent law school grad to write these onerous terms and conditions?

  2. I think you are giving this site too much credit. I love the fact that there is a World Wide Pinhole Photography Day, but it’s not like this guy “owns” the day. It is probably just some dude that wants to feel important, so he made a site about his hobby. You or I could do the same thing. I declare November 20th to be Intergalactic Cross Processing Day. I will call it “I.C.P. Day.” If it catches on I can feel important and start making the rules for my invented universe. Only Ilford film and Nikon cameras. All submissions must be accompanied by a certificate of authenticity that I will sell you for 10 bucks.

    Regardless, I can’t take a site seriously that looks like it was built with Microsoft Word and a clip art cd. I bet that we could build a better WWPPD site and this guy would look like the amateur that he is. What would he do? Sue us? Let’s not give him any more attention than he deserves. The pinhole groups on Flickr are a better place to post your photos, anyway.

  3. I agree with you, this is utter bullshit! I’m glad I didn’t bother to submit anything, just a bit too lazy but that is what they are relying on people being to lazy to read through the rules.

  4. I’ve sent a follow up mail to the WPPD team:

    “If you are going to write up a long set of terms, they need to join up and make sense. The current rules seem to be ambiguous and contradictory. Neither Nicolai or I were suggesting that they deliberately dodgy. Far from it.

    It could be done differently, perhaps something as simple as “Only upload lensless images taken on WPPD for which you have the rights and permissions to do so. Anything we think is pornographic or unacceptable won’t be displayed. You allow us to display your picture on the site for free, and we won’t claim your copyright, or charge you any money. Off you go, have fun.”

    Apart from specific dates for uploads, and the contact info, I think that contains the intended meaning of the 20 existing terms.

    I hope that you understand that these questions and suggestions come from wanting to support WPPD, and see it thrive.”

    of course, to have been really accurate I should have said “lensless photographic images” but otherwise I think that covers it. Thoughts?

  5. I’m not going to get into the controversy about the conditions of submissions right now, but I’d like to respond to Adrian about the amateurishness of the site.
    It is a very complicated database driven site that allows the coordinators to review submissions and approve or hold them for discussion or clarification of technical problems with the submissions. It is searchable by a number of criteria, yielding a page of images which then can be navigated with front and back buttons. It works really well and does it’s job of letting anyone in the world participate in the celebration of pinhole photography (which, incidentally, is the point, but I’m not going to get into the accusations). Yes, the design is a little on the plain side, but it’s a very well programmed site that does an excellent job. Not only that, but it was done (and hosted for a number of years) entirely voluntarily. If you can do better, please whip out MSWord and show me what you can do.

  6. Well, in reply to noleander, rights and permissions are a hot-button issue right now, with various entities asserting rights that they have no, er, right to, and it’s only by knowing what you’re agreeing to that you can protect yourself.

    I’m more than a little disappointed that these rules are even posted, especially given how broad they are. I don’t see how anyone can defend rules 18 and 20.

    I’m even more disappointed that a thread on this topic at f295.org has been flushed down the memory hole. Talk about ownership and rights issues: why host a community around an aesthetic, with discussion areas, and remove content around a possibly contentious issue like this? If it’s defensible, defend it: if not, make it work for everyone involved. But censorship of ideas is especially ironic in an arts forum.

    I like the idea of WPPD and I respect and appreciate the volunteer effort that does into it, but I can’t support a gallery that asserts rights like this. Far better to simply post to Flickr and tag ’em WPPD2007 so people can find them that way.

  7. This is what I sent to the WPPD folks (<FLAME ON>)

    Good morning:

    I find these new rules for WPPD unacceptable and offensively broad, to say nothing of the spelling (acceptation? is that like acceptance?).

    Acceptation of the Rules
    (20) The act of participating in the WPPD implies whole acceptance of all rules and conditions presented here.

    This tells me that by taking a pinhole image on 4/29/2007, I am agreeing to all your terms and conditions. I don’t think so. Happily, this is all unenforceable. The only control WPPD has over any works I create is over works I submit for the online gallery, and this ridiculous set of terms and conditions makes it clear that I need not bother.

    Nice work, taking a hobby pursued by all kinds of people, from a wide range of aesthetics and skill levels, and making it into a legal exercise.

    Include me out.
    (</FLAME OFF>)

    Apparently, acceptation means exactly the same thing as acceptance:

    1. The usual or accepted meaning, as of a word or expression. See synonyms at meaning.
    2. Favorable reception; approval.

    I leave it up to the reader to marvel at the irony of definition 2.

  8. Are these rules actually new? I haven’t managed to get my WPPD film souped yet, so I haven’t looked at the upload form but it sounds pretty similar to what I remember from years past.

    It sounds to me like the organizers:

    Don’t want to break any laws,

    Don’t want to get sued,

    Don’t want anyone to get hurt (feelings or otherwise),

    Understand there will be gray areas where judgment calls are required, and thus reserve the right to make those calls.

    I think any assumption that they are out to steal someone’s images or otherwise infringe is a bit over the top. I haven’t posted an image yet, but assuming there is something on the film I shot I fully intend to post and I’m not the slightest bit concerned about the rules. Yes, they could be written a hundred different ways and they probably aren’t what a lawyer would write. So what? We’re supposed to be shooting photos with simple cameras and having fun, not preparing for legal action. Do we have to invite the lawyers into everything we do?

  9. Nicolai and Katie,
    Thanks for your suggestions. The Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day coordinator team plans to revisit and revise our body of rules before the next pinhole day.

    Tom Miller
    WPPD Coordinating Team Leader
    ————-

    Here is a little history and background about Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (WPPD).

    The first Pinhole Day happened on April 29, 2001. The idea for Pinhole Day was suggested by Zernike Au (Zero Image) of Hong Kong on Valentines Day, February 14, 2001. Between the idea and the celebration, complete with website in twelve languages and complete with rules, was around ten weeks. The original set of rules, which have not been significantly changed since then, and not changed at all in the last five years, were created by a set of pinhole enthusiasts, not lawyers, trying to anticipate any contingencies that might arise in the (at the time) new arena of global internet art galleries with open posting. The original coordinating team members were from Hong Kong, Japan, the United States, Canada, El Salvador and France – truly international and representing the viewpoints and mores of many cultures. My own role in the first pinhole day was negligible; so I can, without patting myself on the back, say that I stand in awe of the founders’ efforts.

    Since then, through this moment, 9218 photos have been uploaded to the WPPD galleries without any complaints about the rules except the one posted here.

    WPPD is a true grassroots, non-commercial organization, with all work done by volunteers. There have been thousands of unpaid hours expended on organizing and nurturing Pinhole Day since its inception, including hundreds of hours of Gregg Kemps time creating and maintaining the website over the years plus Jason Schlauchs webmaster time this year. And consider the other coordinators’ time spent keeping the organization going: planning the event, approving and editing images, coordinating the events listings, the translators’ time maintaining the site in 17 languages, the publicity team members’ time writing to periodicals and galleries in their various countries and regions, time spent corresponding with educators throughout the world: it adds up to a lot of heartfelt effort expended by dozens of people over the years to bring smiles and a sense of pure wonder to people across the planet.

    The WPPD coordinators have never made a cent from these efforts; the goal has always been a celebration of a simple and accessible art form. The exhibition opportunity offered equally to all folks living on our planet is just that: an opportunity to be part of a global celebration. Reading anything more into the organization is pure speculation and results in diminished joy for all.

    The celebration is open to all; the decision to participate rests with each individual.

  10. Bob, the rules have not changed since inception, as I understand it. I suppose I never read them last year, in my giddiness over this new forum for expression.

    That said, I think they could be as simple as what you state in your comment, with a well-crafted disclaimer that local customs should be taken into account when creating and viewing images. So while I can take and view a pinhole nude (dream on) not everyone can either create it or view it, based on where they live.

    What might help, if the WPPD folks are agreeable, is for those who find these terms and conditions hard to take to create an alternate set of rules that both encourage and foster creativity and protect WPPD from any potential legal issues.

    as I noted over at the new thread on this issue at f295, I am profoundly disappointed that these terms and conditions were put in place and that discussion of them has been met with censorship and a refusal to engage those creators who object. Without pinhole photographers, what is WPPD? How many is it OK to alienate and censor for the simple act of speaking their minds?

  11. And the thread at f295 was just closed, but not removed. So much for

    The place for general pinhole discussion and a healthy debate! Don’t be afraid to start an argument… we’re all friends here

    Time to cool off, I think. Making pictures is more fun than talking about them.

  12. Paul,

    I see nothing wrong with the way they’ve stated the rules, and see no reason – none at all – to change them.

    I think Tom Miller’s post says it better than I can, 9000-plus images from a range of cultures over several years and never a complaint until now. I can see the intent of the rules without worrying about all the possible ways someone could twist them. Why would they cheat? What would they gain? More important, what would they lose?

    The simple difference is, I trust the organizers. I have no reason not to. This will be the fourth WPPD I’ve participated in, and I think it is an amazing display of cooperation and friendship. As Tom stated, this is a massive undertaking done by volunteers for people they don’t know, simply because they want to do something we can all enjoy together.

    What more does someone have to do to earn your trust?

  13. Why post it here and on f295 as well as sending it to the organisers? Not to start a big flame war. I was hoping that there would be a general discussion about rights and rules, and the way these affect all of us. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, and some people have instead seen it as a mean-spirited rant.

    I’d hoped it was clear from the original post that both of us support and celebrate WPPD, and that there was no suggestion that there was any intent to bamboozle participants.

    Generally, I think there is a valid patch between “be part of something and agree to all parts of it” and “go somewhere else and set up your own rules”. That patch consists of liking and supporting something, seeing some flaws, and wanting to help polish them away. I’d hope that could be a more constructive stance than a “love it or leave it” absolute.

    If i see a problem, my first instinct is to start unpicking it and trying to see why it’s in a tangle. And then try to work out what the intent was, and find a better solution. The original post was long because we wanted to show how and why the rules didn’t join up–that’s the unpicking part. When you try to put together a big set of rules, trying to cover specifics, it’s very easy to start tripping over your tail. Keeping it simple, and not trying to define every eventuality usually makes more sense, and usually ends up offering far more protection to everyone involved should they ever need that protection.

    Tom M: thank you for your note and for the background history.

  14. Tom Miller: Thanks for being willing to re-visit the rules. As we said above, Katie and I both believe that WPPD deserves to be celebrated and supported. The collaborative history you’ve outlined is part of what makes it great.

    What it comes down to for me is that even the potential for “all your base are belong to us” is not a good thing, particularly when “your base” = my photos.

    That’s the long and short of it, and is in no way a statement about any of the WPPD team personally. On the contrary, the contact I have had with the current team members has been good, and I’ve found them to be nice and honest people. But who knows what the future holds? It may be a completely different team in 5 or 10 years.

    I also believe that agreeing to these terms may have an impact on what I can do in the future with anything I submit. With a rule that says that the rules can change at any time, I can’t honestly say that the rights to that photo are, utterly without doubt, unencumbered and mine to license, sell, or assign. That’s a very practical, bread-and-butter concern for a working artist, and is in my opinion more likely to be a problem than a group of volunteers with a solid history behind them suddenly becoming evil.

  15. What more does someone have to do to earn your trust?

    Couple of ways that can be done:

    Engage me when I raise an issue, instead of telling me I have no issue worth raising

    Explain why these terms and conditions are necessary, and where they obviously contradict or degenerate into nonsense, address those issues

    The whole idea of rights and permissions is so loaded right now, I can’t understand why questions/concerns about that would be swept aside as “no big deal.”

    It’s really not an issue of earning my trust, as I entered last year. I would probably have posted some images this year, but at the end of the day, why should I? Even if this discussion hadn’t taken place, I might have paused at the idea of

    The coordinating team reserves the right to modify the rules of the operation if they judge necessary; in such an event, decisions of the organizers are final.

    Do I assume the worst? No. But am I comfortable with such an open-ended requirement? No. Do I have any idea why that would be necessary? None. Has anyone replied with a hypothetical example, something that might have led to that being added? No.

    I’d just as soon post my stuff to Flickr where I can interact with people who look at them and possibly comment on them. There’s no shortage of ways to exhibit pictures on the web.

  16. A personal observation…

    Flickr is owned by Yahoo! Inc. Here are the first two sentences of the Flickr Terms of Service as of last Thursday:

    ( Yahoo! Inc. (“Yahoo!”) welcomes you. Yahoo! provides its service to you subject to the following Terms of Service (“TOS”), which may be updated by us from time to time without notice to you. )

    If you have posted anything to Flickr, you clicked the little box and agreed to abide by this rule. I have done it myself.

    The suggestion that Pinhole Day should eliminate its rule on rule-changing creates a dilemma. In order to implement rule changes, as suggested tin this thread, the coordinators have to have the ability to modify the rules.

  17. Paul,

    Maybe I’ve missed something, but I don’t see anything in the WPPD rules suggesting they are claiming any rights to your image. To suggest that the organizers’ right to modify the rules threatens your rights to your own work is where the trust issue arises.

    I find it interesting that you folks have singled out WPPD as a concern about rights. If you post something on Flickr and someone views your image, a simple right-click brings up the option to copy the image to the clipboard, where the user can then put it in his own website or misuse it however he chooses. The same is true of f/295. If you try that with the WPPD gallery though, you’ll find that option is blocked (at least with IE, I haven’t tried anything else). Who is more concerned about your rights, the people who will let anyone grab your image easily or someone who blocks access? Further, many people post fairly high-resolution images on Flickr, but on WPPD the images are fairly low res, probably not the sort of thing someone would want to appropriate anyway.

    You tell me where your images are more protected. On the WPPD gallery, only the organizers could take your image, but with Flickr or f/295 (and most other sites as well, including this one) the mere act of posting it is an invitation to the whole bloody world to help themselves.

  18. If you try that with the WPPD gallery though, you’ll find that option is blocked (at least with IE, I haven’t tried anything else).

    Perhaps this is the root of my frustration. I just went to the WPPD 2007 gallery and dragged David van Zandt’s lovely image to my desktop. Sure, right-clicking may be “blocked” but the image is still available.

    Bottom-line, they are not “protected” at all. All images are downloaded to your browser cache so the protection is “security through obscurity” ie, we hope you don’t look for this.

    And rule 18 trumps the lot:

    (18) The coordinating team reserves the right to modify the rules of the operation if they judge necessary; in such an event, decisions of the organizers are final.

    Do I think anyone will “reverse rule 1 and say, ‘surprise, there are entry and exhibition fees now, and since you already entered and exhibited, you owe us $1,000!’.” No, but why make such an overly-broad condition at all?

  19. Of course you’re right, but my point is that at least they are trying, which suggests they are more concerned about protecting your rights than infringing on them. Besides, how is WPPD any different from Flickr? Or this site, for that matter? Why are you singling them out?

    As Tom points out in his last post, not only does Flickr have the same rule about rule-changing, so does everyone else and if they didn’t have it they couldn’t make any of the changes you are lobbying for. Your bank has it, your ISP has it, everyone has it.

    One final note. You want to be engaged about your concerns, but if you go back and reread what you sent to the organizers, it really doesn’t look like you want to be engaged. You come in swinging, state your opinion that their rules are ridiculous and un-enforceable, and finish with “include me out”. Personally, I’d have just said “OK” and hit the delete key. If you want answers, ask questions.

  20. Well, you got me there. I had read Nicolai’s piece and it got my steam up.

    My disappointment stems from, a. the certainty that these terms and conditions were necessary (where Katie Cooke has suggested an alternate version that does more with less words) and that WPPD’s site afforded some protection against image theft, and b. the reaction of surprise that anyone could question these rules and the attitude (at f295.org) that the best response to the issue is censorship. I realize f295 is not officially affiliated with pinholeday.org but there is quite a bit of overlap.

    Some would argue that these kinds of issues might be a sign of the pinhole community maturing enough to be concerned with rights and permissions: perhaps there are enough solid practitioners doing good work to elevate this beyond a fringe hobby. I get the sense that some people don’t want it to mature or become widely-known, but to stay a niche interest, pursued by a small number of enthusiasts (I have seen comments that made this clear, so I’m not reading between the lines.)

    On f295: if someone creates a community site, they no longer truly own it: it belongs to the community that makes it worth going to. The analogy I made there was that so long as the patrons don’t bust up the fixtures or drive off paying custom, it should be “hands off.” After all, there are no physical assets to be damaged: the chief asset is the community or good will, as a business appraiser would call it.

    It’s obvious to me that f295.org is not a public space, but an extension of a personal space. To be honest, I have found it a hassle to post stuff there, due to the image size constraints: it was easier to simply link images from Flickr. Much as I like the stuff I see at f295, I see more at Flickr and the experience is optimized for finding stuff to see.

    I think this topic is exhausted. In private email, I see that a resolution might be forthcoming. Let’s see what comes of that.

  21. It’s hard to see clearly when you are reading through the smoke of someone else’s anger.

    I hope there is a resolution that satisfies you.

  22. Bob, this issue is completely beside the point as it’s already against international copyright law and wasn’t a concern we talked about, but since it’s been brought up, I’ll address it.

    If you can see an image on the Web, you can steal it. It’s as simple as that.

    It’s trivial to look through the source or a browser’s page info dialog (if it has one), grab the address of the image, and load it directly. Even if you put cookie and referrer checks in the server, they can easily be faked with wget, curl, or even telnet, which are all free and multi-platform.

    It’s even easier to simply take a screenshot and crop off the browser window. This takes less than 30 seconds and can be done with the basic tools that come with Windows, the Mac OS, and most windowing systems for Unix.

    Disabling right clicks doesn’t protect anything (particularly when you can just turn JavaScript off) and takes other browser functionality away from the user.

  23. The discussion between Paul and I wandered a bit off track to be sure. My only point was that at least they were obviously thinking more in terms of protection than the infringement you seemed to be concerned about in your original post. Clearly nothing on the web can be really protected.

    I still don’t see the need for change but I can’t imagine them changing the rules so much that I’d find them unacceptable, so good luck in your discussions with the oganizers.

  24. I agree, the organizers did give some thought to protecting the submitters’ images, but as one of my favorites from Will Rogers makes clear, “it ain’t what we don’t know that gets us in trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.” It’s the certainty that images are protected, by disabling a feature, that gives me pause. And by extension, the terms & conditions are similarly well-intentioned but poorly executed.

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