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The next content creation machine to be sold/bought for an obscene amount ? Pinterest

Big internet companies ( Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple) are now in a frenzy purchase of content. The reason is that content attracts traffic and traffic is what they sell. The more content, the better. And since making content is expensive, they rely on the crowd to create the content. However, one of the internet’s dirty secret is that what the crowd sources is mostly content made by others and repurposes illegally.

Take Tumblr for example. The majority of the Tumblr blogs are made of user curated content taken from other sites. They repost what they like and Tumblr makes it very easy to do so. But in the process, they steal content unlawfully. Photographs, mainly. Created by pros.

via $1 billion worth of stolen content | Thoughts of a Bohemian.

Still No Real Clarity Regarding "Transformative Use" In Appropriation Art

So while Cariou v. Prince can rightly be considered a victory for appropriation art to some extent, what it is not is a victory for clarity, guidance and certainty in the very murky area of fair use and “transformativeness.”

via theiplawblog.com.

Copyright Implications of Yahoo Buying Tumblr

These companies don’t just know a great deal about you, they have a license to use your creations and, as the Yahoo!/Tumblr deal shows, they can transfer that license or sublicense it as they see fit. This is a tremendous amount of control and it should make users nervous. Though none of these companies do anything too unscrupulous yet.

via Plagiarism Today.

There's No Such Thing As Professional Photographers Anymore... On Flickr

Flickr Pro, which had allowed users to pay for more storage space, is going away. “There’s no such thing as Flickr Pro today because [with so many people taking photographs] there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore,” Mayer said (though she acknowledged that there are “different skill levels”).

via @zarias more: Tech News and Analysis.

Stacy L. Pearsall's Photos From Iraq

they questioned why she did not report her problems sooner. But she knew that if she had reported them, should would lose the job she loved so much. “The military had trained me this way — to suck it up,” she said.

“The one thing about PTSD is it’s the war that never ends” she said. “Suicide might seem like a viable option. It’s a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”

via lens.blogs.nytimes.com.

No Surprises At Visa pour l'image

Someone asked when we would see at Perpignan the likes of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Jean-François Leroy thought it was some kind of joke.

via Le Journal de la Photographie.

Tomás Munita: 2013 Recipient of the Chris Hondros Fund Award

citing his “fierce commitment to photojournalism and endless drive to tell a story.” Munita’s portfolio of work, shot in a wide variety of settings and locales, reflects a strong and nuanced grasp of the human condition. His photographs of refugees in Afghanistan, prisoners in El Salvador and daily life in Cuba all demonstrate just how in touch Munita is with the currents (and undercurrents) of life.

via Time- LightBox.

Optimize A Picture To Boost It's Chances Of Winning An Award

All you have to do is reproduce the effect that a scratch on the lens would have created in a photo, and purist jurors will praise the photographer for not having gone too far with enhancement, Palmisano says with a chuckle.

via Enhanced Reality: Exploring the Boundaries of Photo Editing - ABC News.

The Creative Class Is The Canary In The Digital Coal Mine

At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion.  But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people.

via Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class - Salon.com.

The Future Is vibrant, It’s Just Going To Be Very Different From Mine

I’ve got a couple of young assistants in my studio, and I say look, you’re future is very vibrant…a lot of people are saying doomsday stuff right now, but I think the future is vibrant, it’s just going to be very different from mine. Talk about multitasking! They have to be good on the web, they are going to have to know video, audio, all that stuff. They’ll have to be kind of their own multifaceted entertainment-information package. They are going to have to bring lots of skills to the party. We learned how to do one thing well, and that was how to tell a good story with a camera in our hands.

--Joe McNally

via Conversation: Joe McNally | burn magazine.