brainstorms

Wednesday May 25, 2005

raw flaw

michael reichmann and jurgen specht have published a good essay about the camera raw problem, recently inflamed by nikon's unfortunate decision to encrypt NEF white balance information. [this essay is more or less a summary of what many photographers have been writing; nikon has already lost d2x sales as a result of its decision]

[this line from the article does not work]

But, in the US at least, with the Millennium Copyright Act, the game has changed. Simply put, anyone that cracks encrypted or otherwise protected intellectual property is subject to criminal prosecution. And, since it possibly can be argued that the code (not content) in an encrypted or "protected" RAW file belongs to its creator (meaning the camera maker), any company or programmer breaking that code needs have liability concerns.

this is a confusion over the creator of the intellectual property and the content vs its container. how do we seperate the two cleanly [if we can at all], and what rights does the photographer have over the container, the digital equivalent of mylar and silver halide crystals? i think there is a good argument that says every bit of information [eg. white balance] carried in the container for the unrestricted recreation of the image is a part of the intellectual property and it cannot be kept from its creator. as I have suggested before, hiding any of this information is an intolerable bit of idiocy, and is good grounds for a legal action against a manufacturer.

[musical recommendation: grant green, the latin bit, blue note]