Category Archives: photography

Everything related to light, a lens and some kind of device sensible to light

Duas falácias da Lei da Cópia Privada

“Conforme foi salientado por vários deputados no debate parlamentar do dia 4, a evolução que se tem operado na sociedade digital torna imperativa e inadiável a criação de uma Lei da Cópia Privada que, levando em conta as novas realidades tecnológicas, proteja os direitos dos autores e dos artistas, encerrando o capítulo da era analógica que a lei ainda em vigor tem mantido como principal referência”, lê-se no comunicado.

SPA congratula-se com “amplo consenso” para aprovação da lei da cópia privada [PUBLICO].

Tal posto brilhantemente pelo Marco Santos (aliás como é hábito no Bitaites) achar que todos somos culpados é logo um péssimo ponto de partida de uma lei que é mais um exemplo do resultado de pessoas legislam sobre algo que não conhecem, à imagem do que está a acontecer nos Estados Unidos com a lei de combate à pirataria.

Partindo do princípio que uma lei que cobra uma “taxa de pirataria” em dispositivos de armazenamento é aprovada há duas conclusões que facilmente se podem tirar:

  1. Como utilizador final passo a ter legitimidade moral para copiar, duplicar, baixar conteúdos livremente uma vez que estou a pagar uma taxa que cobre esses conteúdos.
  2. Como autor espero que sejam criados mecanismos de modo a receber a minha parte deste novo imposto, ou pelo menos, ter acesso a dispositivos de armazenamento sem a tal sobretaxa.

Mas este raciocínio tem duas enormes falácias:

  1. Ao invés de repensar um modelo de negócio da primeira metade do século XX, e atualizá-lo aos novos meios e a uma nova relação entre autores e consumidores que a Internet criou , a indústria prefere enfiar a cabeça no buraco e prosseguir com a caça às bruxas que tem mantido desde o Napster.
  2. Organizações como a Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores, ao contrário do que o nome pomposo possa levar a crer, são apenas cooperativas e lobbies que defendem os seus interesses e não os interesses dos autores, que continuam a ser o elo mais fraco.

Na verdade esta lei protege não o autor mas os lucros da indústria que dele se alimenta.

 

Mais leituras recomendadas:
Pena Antecipada sobre Crime Potencial [Blasfémias]
Os links da #PL118 [Jonasnuts]
Lei da Cópia Privada #pl118 – todos criminosos até prova contrária (1/2) [Aventar]
A Lei Minority Report [Bitaites]

Photo site updated

 I did some changes on my   photography web site: cleaner and minimalist look for the galleries, easier navigation of the archives section and a new set of photos to look at. Check all the changes in detail on my other blog.

Related articles

    Enhanced by Zemanta

    4 reasons why I renewed my Flickr Pro subscription over moving to Google+

    Google Plus logo

    Image by Bruce Clay, Inc via Flickr

     

    Image representing Flickr as depicted in Crunc...

    Image via CrunchBase

    Recently my Flickr Pro account was about to expire and I faced myself with a quite simple question: Should I renew it or not? Google gave a new life to Picasa (possibly renamed to Google Photos one of these days) by launching Google+, has been growing steadily and has gained lots of popularity among photographers which have embraced it quickly as its social network, actually most of my Google+ followers and activity is related to photography.

    The truth is nowadays I don’t use Flickr as regularly as I did, Google+ became much more interesting these days, and when my Flickr Pro account was about to expire I considered not to to renew it and move to Picasa. The option wasn’t abandoning Flickr, still is the largest photography community around, but changing the center of my photographic online presence to Picasa. I truly was tempted, but in the end it wasn’t enough to move.

    The Lazy factor

    Probably the less significant but a still valid reason , I would move a large amount of photos around, that would be painful and time consuming.

    Google+ still has some annoyances

    The Google+ has evolved a lot since its launch, all Google products are or will be tightly integrated, but still are some rough edges: user experience between Picasa and Google Photos isn’t coherent, although the contents are the same. Flickr feels more fine tuned and mature.

    Flickr has a great integration

    Flickr was one of the first services to make API‘s popular and the result is that currently you have thousands of apps or mashups and you don’t have to go to the website to actually being using it, you can easily take your data and integrate it in many ways: the archives section of my website is built over Flickr API.

    Traffic

    Flickr is huge and even on a slow week I can easily get a few hundred hits a day, and some of it ends up in my site, Google+/Picasa still can’t match this.

     

    For now I’ll stay at Flikr, at least for another year, but I’ll still can be found at my Google+ profile.

    Enhanced by Zemanta

    Fetch Flickr feeds with photos linking to a Lightbox

    Flickr’s RSS feed photos link to the regular photo page, with too many links, buttons and banners distracting from the photo (specially if one of your photos gets “invaded” by award groups). The Lightbox view, with its dark background, is a much more suitable landing page for the photos published via the RSS feed.

    With this simple Yahoo Pipe you can retrieve your photostream RSS with photos pointing directly to the Lightbox view! Just insert your Flickr User Id and export it any way you like.

    A few reasons to hate “flame wars”!

    Flame Wars: The free post

    I don’t really get those who treat brands like sports teams, offering blind allegiance over self-interest. That’s just zealotry. God bless that file system; my platform, right or wrong.

    via If You Already Hate Windows 8 Then You Hate Technology [Gizmodo] .

     

    Neither do I.

    Throughout the years, I’ve been faced with flame wars in the various aspects of my life: programming language or platform of choice, operating system, camera gear brand, etc. . Fan boys that defend the lighter, faster, more stable or simply the best thing they’ve found as a crusade, feeding long hours and lengthy pages of discussions with empty arguments like someone keeps pouring gasoline to a bonfire.

    I’ve seen too many Java programmers bashing vigorously .Net, programmers who don’t really grasp the main concepts of Object Oriented Programming. Console gamers that play the same game but keep repeating when it’s played in their . The endless Nikon vs. Canon feud, which is worth a post of it’s own, where in every meeting or photowalk people inevitably start counting how many Nikonians and Canonians are present, like choosing sides on a war. Some Apple fanboys, probably my favorite, that some time ago criticized Windows and praised openness of Linux and now seem to switched sides by defending a system that’s actually more closed than Windows.

    I’ve chosen may brands but I never offered allegiance to any, some I’ve used for many years while I dropped others. I’ve always used Nikon gear, I’ve bought a grand total of four Nikon reflex cameras and a handful of Nikkor lenses, I was always pleased and never considered switching brands, despite finding features elsewhere that I love. On the other hand I used Windows for many years but got very tired of it, which pushed to try the several flavors of Linux, I ended up sticking with Ubuntu for it’s active community and the uncluttered, straightforward interface of Gnome, and the truth is feels more natural and fits me much better than Windows.

    Regarding the post linked above, which caused me to write this rant, although my platforms of choice nowadays are Linux and Android I was really pleased with Windows Phone 7 (although I still believe it arrived too late and fail eventually) and I’m very curious to see how the Metro interface will evolve in Windows 8.

    I guess that’s human nature that people like to choose sides.

    Technology is just a tool, something to make your life easier and more comfortable. It isn’t a sports team or a religion to follow blindly, and since I’m openly “religionless” I’ll reserve my biased thoughts only to subjects related to my sports team.

    Digital cartridges for analog 35-mm cameras?

    Media_httpwwwre35neti_iuuoj
    via RE35

    Still a preview, so no prices or availability, but I’ll be following this one closely, even if it’s just for curiosity.

    Posted via t3mujin’s quick thoughts

    Predator: A Smart Camera that Learns

    Zdenek Kalal‘s PhD project, an amazing photo recognition that could be the future of a camera’s auto-focus?

    Posted via t3mujin’s quick thoughts

    Getty and Corbis Monopoly, by Piclet

    Concursos fotográficos, um bom negócio…

    Não gosto de concursos fotográficos, e isto alarga-se a muitos outros tipos de concursos criativos; são dos maiores embustes onde quem participa está crente na ilusão de promoção, de uma esperança vã de crédito reconhecido e possivelmente de um prémio (muitas vezes magro); mas na verdade não passam de uma forma fácil para quem os organiza, muitas vezes grandes empresas ou autarquias (ou como no caso abaixo, do novo concurso do Turismo de Lisboa), de obter conteúdos a um custo marginal, até porque muitas das vezes nem existe prémio monetário, tal como neste excerto das regras do novo concurso do Turismo de Lisboa:

    (…)

    Cada autor deve mencionar especificamente, no respectivo email ou carta, que cede ao Turismo de Lisboa todos os direitos de utilização das imagens que enviar;

    O Turismo de Lisboa poderá utilizar todas as imagens recepcionadas, sejam elas premiadas ou não;

    (…)

    O prémio consiste na publicação de uma fotografia por mês, durante um ano, a partir de Novembro, na Revista Turismo de Lisboa-RTL, no Guia Follow Me e no site do Turismo de Lisboa. Será ainda atribuída uma peça em cerâmica, representativa de Lisboa, a cada um dos 12 vencedores;

    via Visit Lisboa

    A troco de um potencial destaque nos meios de comunicação da entidade e de uma mão cheia de peças de cerâmica para os vencedores, fica-se com um arquivo mais recheado de conteúdos sem quaisquer restrições ou limitações de utilização, conteúdos aos quais os autores abriram mão de todos os direitos de utilização, ainda por cima porque se tratam de todas as fotos a concurso e não só as doze vencedoras. Não querendo por em causa a má fé este concurso do Turismo de Lisboa, ou tantos outros, a verdade é que se trata de um bom negócio para algumas das partes, mas provavelmente não para todas…

    My current photographic to-buy list

    [Update] Only one more to go!

    I’m waaay over my budget for photographic gear this year, with a handful of new cameras and lenses bought recently, but I still have some “special needs” I need to take care of.

    1. A light, portable and yet relatively sturdy tripod – I’m not a real nature photographer so I don’t want a “put any kind of lens with any camera, whatever the weight, whatever the weather conditions” tripod, I’m thinking in those neat carbon fiber Induro’s, I keep hearing good things about them. A brand new Induro tripod with an Novoflex head, a light tripod with a very compact and solid ballhead.
    2. A photographic monitor – Nuff said, a bigger monitor that uses an LCD technology with full color reproduction. A new monitor is on its way.
    3. Some kind of centralized storage, other than external hard disks, to have a bullet-proof backup strategy of my photos and the rest of my documents; something with redundant storage and smart enough to automatically back them up to my online storage, and certainly not a Drobo: I tend to avoid solutions using proprietary formats.

    Switch to our mobile site