Do You Sell Originals, or Reproductions?

In the last entry in the “Photographing Art” series, Don’t Bother With Image Protection, I covered some reasons why I think that allowing images of art work to be freely shared isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some people want to photograph art, or download images of art, and for artists dealing with one-of-a-kind images, like painters, the benefits of this infringement can outweigh the risks.

The last entry was rather one-sided, however. Freely allowing copies isn’t going to be beneficial in all situations. If you are in the selling reproductions business, file sharing has the potential to eat away at sales. I can sympathize with this. I have made money licensing images for prints myself. As a struggling artist, I know that every source of income, no matter how small it might seem, is very significant.

How many image makers are in the business of selling reproductions? Photographers certainly are, but I believe that it is important for artists to decide on the main focus of their practice: are they about selling originals, or selling reproductions.
If you are in the business of selling reproductions, this series is probably not for you. If you are more interested in selling originals, please come with me as I take you through the weird world of infinite goods.
Read the rest of this entry »

In the last entry in the "Photographing Art" series, Don't Bother With Image Protection, I covered some reasons why I think that allowing images of art work to be freely shared isn't necessarily a bad thing. Some people want to photograph art, or download images of art, and for artists dealing with one-of-a-kind images, like painters, the benefits of this infringement can outweigh the risks. The last entry was rather one-sided, however. Freely allowing copies isn't going to be beneficial in all situations. If you are in the selling reproductions business, file sharing has the potential to eat away at sales. I can sympathize with this. I have made money licensing images for prints myself. As a struggling artist, I know that every source of income, no matter how small it might seem, is very significant. How many image makers are in the business of selling reproductions? Photographers certainly are, but I believe that it is important for artists to decide on the main focus of their practice: are they about selling originals, or selling reproductions. If you are in the business of selling reproductions, this series is probably not for you. If you are more interested in selling originals, please come with me as I take you through the weird world of infinite goods. One idea of Tim O'Reilly's that I try to keep floating around in my head is that piracy should be thought of as a sort of progressive tax on success. If you are big and successful, there are going to be lots of pirates, and sales will be affected. If you are small and still emerging, piracy is a way to rapidly expand your audience, leading to more sales in the future. And, if no one is pirating your material, thats a bad sign: nobody wants what you are offering, even when it's free. If this idea is right, then knowing whether infringement should be seen as a concern or not is made very simple: Just ask "Am I successful?"       IF answer = "yes" THEN fight infringement       IF answer = "no" THEN promote infringement I've used these quotes from O'Reilly and Doctorow before, but they are good ones, so I'll use them again: "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy." "It's hard to monetize fame, but it's impossible to monetize obscurity." What is the bigger problem: piracy or obscurity? What is more important: royalties or exposure? I argued in the last post in the series the reasons why I believe that if obscurity is the problem, fighting piracy is not the solution. Piracy can be thought of as a form of word-of-mouth advertising. To summarize the argument in one sentence, "unless you are actively selling licensed reproductions, why fight the spread of copies?" A potential concern might be, "but what if I decide to license reproduction of my work in the future". This is a valid concern, letting everyone have free copies now might prevent them from paying for copies later. Making sure the only copies that are freely available are a fairly low resolution is one option. "You can have a free desktop background image now, but if you make a poster from that image, it will look pretty crappy. Here is a nice high-rez print for sale. Just see what you've been missing!" Creative works that are part of the free-culture movement or creative commons might be seen as a sort of public portfolio piece or career stepping stone. You let it go for free right now, hoping someone of importance will see your work, learn your name, and hire you for a paid project in the future. Several years ago, I was talking to an independent film maker who made the decision to release a movie under a creative commons license. This generated a ton of unexpected attention and exposure, but no money came from the project. Luckily, it was a no-budget film, done out of a passion for film-making, so the lack of sales wasn't seen as a disappointment. Who knows what that attention will bring to his future? TED talks have exploded in popularity over the past few years. Part of this is the license. The videos are free to share, so long as they are not modified, ensuring that the TED branding is left intact. The more people share, copy and download these videos, the stronger the TED brand becomes. Releasing something for free doesn't have to be a death sentence for future profits. One glance at the figures for Nine Inch Nails' 2008 release Ghosts i-iv reveal that with a dedicated built-in audience, free in one place can be used to generate some big sales in other areas, like really fancy box sets. As a painter, a maker of original one-of-a-kind goods, I have an equivalent to the fancy deluxe boxed set - the original painting!

Expanding on ‘Take a Picture’

In the last entry, I introduced you to the reason for my recent focus on taking pictures of art: My next art project is about this very topic. These are the ideas that have been dominating my thoughts lately. It’s what I’ve been thinking about; it’s what I’ve been talking about; therefore, it’s what I’ve been writing about.

When I’m working on something, I like to completely immerse myself in ideas surrounding the topic I’m dealing with in the artwork. I usually start with a very clear and focused thought that I want to develop. I work out the basics, and create a rough sketch or guide to work with. That rough plan must be very flexible, because I find that the ideas I develop throughout production are far more interesting than the initial thought that started the whole thing. I’ve got to anticipate some unexpected turns on my journey to completion. Countless little choices pop up during the process of actually making a finished piece, and I believe that having the right ideas floating around in my head can inform the decisions that I make, and the result is a much stronger finished product.
Well, that’s the idea at least.

The final paragraph of the last entry listed some of the points I wish to raise with “Take a Picture”, but I didn’t actually talk about how I was approaching those issues.

In this entry, I will break down that final paragraph, and expand on each of those points.
Read the rest of this entry »

In the last entry, I introduced you to the reason for my recent focus on taking pictures of art: My next art project is about this very topic. These are the ideas that have been dominating my thoughts lately. It's what I've been thinking about; it's what I've been talking about; therefore, it's what I've been writing about. When I'm working on something, I like to completely immerse myself in ideas surrounding the topic I'm dealing with in the artwork. I usually start with a very clear and focused thought that I want to develop. I work out the basics, and create a rough sketch or guide to work with. That rough plan must be very flexible, because I find that the ideas I develop throughout production are far more interesting than the initial thought that started the whole thing. I've got to anticipate some unexpected turns on my journey to completion. Countless little choices pop up during the process of actually making a finished piece, and I believe that having the right ideas floating around in my head can inform the decisions that I make, and the result is a much stronger finished product. Well, that's the idea at least. The final paragraph of the last entry listed some of the points I wish to raise with "Take a Picture", but I didn't actually talk about how I was approaching those issues. In this entry, I will break down that final paragraph, and expand on each of those points. Before I begin, I should probably insert a little disclaimer. "Take a Picture" is a collaborative effort. It's not just my project; it's something I've been working on with my long-time creative partner, Brad Blucher. Many of the ideas are my own, and many were born out of long 2am discussions with Brad. I'm no longer sure which ideas are my own, which are Brad's, and which we arrived at together. The points bellow are my current thoughts on the project. Brad has not vetted any of them. 1. I wanted to make something that actually required people to participate in the kinds of actions that I'm thinking about. I would like to point out my use of the word "participate". Notice that I did not describe the art as being interactive. I have absolutely nothing against interactive art, I am a huge fan of it. But I do not believe that take a picture is actually interactive. "Interactive art" is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot, but very little of the art under that banner is truly interactive. The project requires audience participation. It does requires the audience to pull out their cameras, but that's not quite interaction. A video game is not interactive because it requires the player to pull out a controller. Interaction is more open ended than that. Take a Picture is not an open-ended experience for the viewer. Nothing about the art is changed by audience participation; there is no feedback. The audience must participate, they must meet us half-way if they wish to see the image; but the image is still there whether they take out their cameras or not. Take a Picture is participatory, not interactive. The "actions that I'm thinking about" are how the ubiquity of digital cameras, and the immediacy and convenience offered by digital photography change our behaviour. People seem to be photographing more of their lives now than ever before. Social media encourages those pictures to be shared and publicly commented on. It's turning everyone into a reporter, pundit, and documentary film maker. 2. I wanted to make art that requires photography to be seen. This part of the project is a rebellion against the Galleries who have a hard-line no-photography policy. For Take a Picture, hanging a big "No Photography" sign kills the work. By preventing people from taking pictures, the art is made inaccessible. Photography must be allowed, or the art simply does not work. 3. I wanted something that clearly highlights how first hand experience differs from documentation. This is something I noticed while I was living overseas. I brought a video camera with me, and I made a point to capture as much as I could. Of course, I didn't always have it on me, so there were moments that I experienced as a documenter, and moments I experienced as a participant. I noticed that those two kinds of experiences felt very different. Having a camera created a sort of mental separation between myself and the events taking place. I wasn't living in the moment, I was watching it unfold on a camera screen. When the camera was absent, I wasn't able to fully enjoy the moment, because the thought that "I should be recording this" refused to leave my mind. XKCD sums this feeling up nicely: http://xkcd.com/77/ Then there is the issue of the fragility of memory. Each time we remember something, that memory changes a little bit. The memories that are triggered from watching the edited video are quite different than the memories that emerge from those undocumented events. Experience is very different than documentation, and today, we seem to document far more than we experience. In "Take a Picture", the distinction between experience and documentation is made overt: During the experience of "Take a Picture", absolutely nothing can be seen. It's just blank canvas. But through a camera screen, and in the documentation that follows, an image is clearly visible on each canvas. 4. I wanted to make something that is friendly to social media. What exactly do I mean why I say this project is "friendly to social media"? No, it's not any sort of complicated automated technological-buzzword measure, being friendly to social media in this case is as simple as a license agreement. I've talked about the legal distinction between image and object before. Even after a painting-the object is sold, the artist retains the legal right to the image-the image contained on that canvas. That legal right means that it very easily could be a violation of copyright for anyone else to take or share pictures of that painting-even though you bought it. Now, in all honesty, this is something that most people would ignore. It is highly unlikely that the copyright police will kick in your door for sending some pictures to a friend, but it is still technically illegal. So, to erase any potential ambiguity or tension, to make sure there is absolutely no uncertainty or apprehension, we have released these images under a creative-commons attribution non-commercial share-alike license. What exactly does that mean? So long as you credit us (Brad Blucher, Kyle Clements) and don't outright sell them, you can do whatever you want with the images contained on these canvases. Take pictures, share, copy, edit, remix, upload, download, post, facebook, tweet, etc. Verb whatever nouns you can think of. Do what you want with your images of Take a Picture!

Take a Picture

From reading my entries so far, it may seem that I have a one-track mind: my only interest is photographing art. There is a reason for this singular focus up to this point. Over the past several months, I have been working on a project that is specifically about photographing art. The issues of art, photography, copyright, digital technologies, and social media have been dominating my thoughts and conversations for a very long time now. It seems only natural that those ideas would spill into this blog as well.

This project has grown out of my interest in free culture. This interest began with an angry museum guard yelling at me for taking some pictures. It grew as I began teaching myself some basic computer programming, where I quickly discovered how wonderful it is to have access to a body of free knowledge, ideas, and materials. Working with electronics, and having a constant need for datasheets and schematics only strengthened this opinion. But, it was Windows Vista that finally provided me with that final push to fully embrace the world of open source. What I found was a world where just about any small tool was freely available with just a few keystrokes (provided I could get the damn wireless connection to work) As a user, the benefits of this mindset, this ecosystem of permissive sharing is very appealing. But I’m not just a content consumer, I’m also an artist; I am a content creator. It’s only fair that as a producer, I should try to pass on the same benefits that I enjoy as a consumer.

The art world that I learned about back in art school was one that prides itself on being part of the cultural avant garde. My experience in the art business leaves me thinking that the culture surrounding free software is several decades ahead of the culture surrounding the arts.

The prohibition of museum photography is something that I believe turns art from a shared cultural artifact into a private commodity. This restriction turns a painting into an object where permission must be sought to do what comes naturally to myself and many of my peers: taking pictures of the cool things we see, and sharing the details online. Realizing that these private commodities live in publicly-funded museums only adds insult to injury. I can’t photograph what I paid for? The objects that are said to represent culture are locked out of the shared attitudes and practices that actually characterize our culture.

I am interested in culture, not commodities. Preventing images from being shared removes them from our shared cultural experience. To quote Cory Doctorow, “It’s not culture if you’re not allowed to talk about it.” Sending pictures back and forth and posting them online is how my generation talks about things.
Read the rest of this entry »

From reading my entries so far, it may seem that I have a one-track mind: my only interest is photographing art. There is a reason for this singular focus up to this point. Over the past several months, I have been working on a project that is specifically about photographing art. The issues of art, photography, copyright, digital technologies, and social media have been dominating my thoughts and conversations for a very long time now. It seems only natural that those ideas would spill into this blog as well. This project has grown out of my interest in free culture. This interest began with an angry museum guard yelling at me for taking some pictures. It grew as I began teaching myself some basic computer programming, where I quickly discovered how wonderful it is to have access to a body of free knowledge, ideas, and materials. Working with electronics, and having a constant need for datasheets and schematics only strengthened this opinion. But, it was Windows Vista that finally provided me with that final push to fully embrace the world of open source. What I found was a world where just about any small tool was freely available with just a few keystrokes (provided I could get the damn wireless connection to work) As a user, the benefits of this mindset, this ecosystem of permissive sharing is very appealing. But I'm not just a content consumer, I'm also an artist; I am a content creator. It's only fair that as a producer, I should try to pass on the same benefits that I enjoy as a consumer. The art world that I learned about back in art school was one that prides itself on being part of the cultural avant garde. My experience in the art business leaves me thinking that the culture surrounding free software is several decades ahead of the culture surrounding the arts. The prohibition of museum photography is something that I believe turns art from a shared cultural artifact into a private commodity. This restriction turns a painting into an object where permission must be sought to do what comes naturally to myself and many of my peers: taking pictures of the cool things we see, and sharing the details online. Realizing that these private commodities live in publicly-funded museums only adds insult to injury. I can't photograph what I paid for? The objects that are said to represent culture are locked out of the shared attitudes and practices that actually characterize our culture. I am interested in culture, not commodities. Preventing images from being shared removes them from our shared cultural experience. To quote Cory Doctorow, "It's not culture if you're not allowed to talk about it." Sending pictures back and forth and posting them online is how my generation talks about things. As a painter, it could be said that I am somewhat shielded from the perceived threat of digital reproduction. The general idea is that painters deal with selling originals, not copies. I am selling a scarce, one-of-a-kind good. This makes my situation different from musicians, video makers, and authors, who are trying to sell copies. In the physical world, originals and copies are both scarce; if I take it, you don't have it any more. Originals are certainly priced much higher, but both have a value. Downloaded music and ebooks have caused a complete shift in those markets. If I take it, you still have it. An extension of the argument that painters are shielded from the threat of digital reproduction is that it's not my place to ramble on about free culture, since it doesn't concern me. Since I'm not facing the same challenges myself, I am not able to discuss them. A legitimate argument in favour of free culture can only be made by those who are directly affected by the challenges it presents. I reject this argument. This opinion ignores both prints and live music. Artists can make a good chunk of their money selling reproductions of their work as posters in frame shops. Musicians can make a good chunk of their money in live performances. Authors can make money with talks and signings. The argument painters only make their money from originals, while authors and musicians only make money from copies is simply false. There are opportunities for sales of both original one-of-a-kind goods and reproductions among nearly all creative fields. I am affected by free culture; it does concern me. But this defence still gives too much ground to the other side. By stating that painters also make money from selling copies, I have implicitly agreed with the idea that artists must be faced with the threat of reproduction to make a legitimate argument on the issue of free culture. Does someone really have to have both a vested interest and first-hand experience to make a legitimate criticism or suggestion? Does Roger Ebert have to be an acclaimed director to be able to criticize movies? Does a person have to be an accomplished musician themselves before they are able to make valid criticisms about other musicians? There are at least five different ideas that are colliding in the free-culture/copyright debate: legal, economic, creators, technical, and the audience. A legal argument could be, "infringement is wrong, so don't do it." An economic argument could be "digital copies are infinite. Any time supply is infinite while demand is limited means a price crash or bubble burst is just around the corner." A creator's argument could be "artists work hard, and would like to be paid for what they do" A technical argument could be "computers, by their very design make perfect copies of things. That's what they do best. Every single use of anything involves multiple copies being made. Copyright law is fundamentally incompatible with copyright law." An argument from the audience might be "Digital content should be free, it is sharable, more content only enriches my life, how can a good person deny sharing life-enriching media with others?" That's five different angles that can be used to approach the issue. How can it be determined which side is right? Who is the authentic voice on the issue? Are lawyer-economists with a career split between programming and performing the only people able to talk about free culture? Does the validity of an argument depend on the person making it? Personally, I'm of the opinion that arguments from authority are a bad way of deciding things. I wanted to create a series of work that focused directly on some of these tensions. It was a struggle to figure out how this could be done. I'm not interested in simply depicting the behaviour through images; I wanted to make art that was far more engaging than that. I wanted to make something that actually required people to participate in the kinds of actions that I'm thinking about. I wanted to make art that requires photography to be seen. I wanted something that clearly highlights how first hand experience differs from documentation. I wanted to make something that is friendly to social media. The project I am talking about is "Take a Picture".

Don’t Bother with Image Protection

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about reproductions of art, and why art can’t be photographed in many museums and galleries.
In part 1, I covered my teenage conspiracy theories about the prohibition of photography, while in part 2, I talked about learning the real reasons during my time in University. Then I switched gears for a bit and talked about image protection, listing some examples of bad ideas and good ideas.

In this entry, I will talk about the issue from a different angle. I will be asking something that should have been considered long before any time is spent on content protection schemes. That question is “Do painters even need to worry about infringement?”

I know, it sounds crazy. You might be thinking, “Kyle, I know you embrace the open source movement, free culture, the creative commons and all that, but this is our livelihood you’re talking about. Give it away! Are you mad?”
As artists, we own the rights to images we make; surely we must protect them, right?
Absolutely, we should protect our work, but I don’t believe that a blanket “All Rights Reserved!” model is necessarily the best approach for a painter to take.
Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, I've spent a lot of time talking about reproductions of art, and why art can't be photographed in many museums and galleries. In part 1, I covered my teenage conspiracy theories about the prohibition of photography, while in part 2, I talked about learning the real reasons during my time in University. Then I switched gears for a bit and talked about image protection, listing some examples of bad ideas and good ideas. In this entry, I will talk about the issue from a different angle. I will be asking something that should have been considered long before any time is spent on content protection schemes. That question is "Do painters even need to worry about infringement?" I know, it sounds crazy. You might be thinking, "Kyle, I know you embrace the open source movement, free culture, the creative commons and all that, but this is our livelihood you're talking about. Give it away! Are you mad?" As artists, we own the rights to images we make; surely we must protect them, right? Absolutely, we should protect our work, but I don't believe that a blanket "All Rights Reserved!" model is necessarily the best approach for a painter to take. Why Do People Want to Photograph Art? I can't pretend to know every reason that every person has for photographing art, or downloading images of artworks, but I do know the reasons why I photograph and download images of art, and I also know the reasons that my peers give when asked why they photograph and download art. It's easy for an image-maker to think, "these are my images, I have the rights to them, copying them is wrong, so you can't do it. No photos!", but it's important to remember that the most important thing is not what we want, but what the viewer wants. It is also the viewer who might one day become a customer, who might buy the work, and let us pay rent, and eat, and buy more supplies, allowing us to keep on going. So being a dick when they want to snap a picture might not be all that helpful to our cause. So, why might a viewer want to photograph our work? What reasons would they have for copying or downloading images of an artist's work? 1. Documenting The main reason I take a picture of an artwork is simple: I really like it, and I want to remember it. I see a lot of art, but I only really like a very small portion of what I see. It might be an unfamiliar technique, a unique composition, or just something executed far better than I am accustomed to seeing. When I come across a real gem, I want to remember it. I want to remember the work, I want to remember the gallery, and most of all, I want to remember the artist. I used to make a habit of collecting show cards, but that is something I have moved away from these past few years. I found that it was a waste of time and paper. The cards would get put into a box and forgotten. Digital files can be archived and tagged for easy access in the future. I stumble across these digital images far more often, making them far more useful to me. Snapping a picture, or saving an image from the artist's website lets me remember them. 2. Sharing When I see a great body of artworks, I want to share what I've seen. I might know a gallery looking for another artist, I might have a group show in mind and want to invite them to show with me. If I don't have their images, I'm not going to remember their name or their work, and I'm not going to have anything to show the gallery or other artists. 3. Matching Decor Some people buy art because they love it, some buy art as an investment, and some people want something to accent their home. Some people want to be sure that the imagery matches the decor in the room they plan to display it. They want to be sure the colours in the painting go with their house. They think they want to buy, but they are not yet 100% sure. A really easy way to do this is to snap a picture and take it home. If the artwork in the picture fits with their interior design choices, they may return the next day and make a purchase. If they don't have that picture to compare, they might remain unsure, play it safe, and not make the purchase. 4. Commercial Reproduction Their is one final possibility for someone wanting to photograph art that can't be ignored: reproduction. Some people might intend to reproduce artwork. It might be another artist wishing to emulate a style or technique, and incorporate it into their own work, or they might wish to repaint what you have made. I don't know of anyone who has had this happen to their work, or has a habit of actually doing this themselves, but it is a possibility. Commercial reproduction is the number one reason I've come across for fearing reproduction. But I don't see how those fears are warranted. Most digital cameras are really crappy. Cellphones and point and shoots just don't take great pictures. The dynamic range is rather limited, making light that looks fine to the human eye look very uneven. This isn't a very good argument because digital cameras have been rapidly improving for years now, and I don't see any signs of that progress slowing down. Eventually, these crappy cameras won't be so crappy. But there is one other reason why I don't think commercial reproduction from photographed images is a legitimate concern: Most paintings in galleries are lit rather poorly for photography. A few halogens aimed at the centre leave the edges noticeably darker. This looks great for viewing in person; our brains correct for any unevenness in the light, and do an excellent job of adjust the white balance. Halogen is magic to the eye, but for commercial reproductions, that's not going to cut it. Warm light with hot spots and shadows isn't usable for commercial prints. For good quality images, a DSLR is much better than a point and shoot. Bulky DSLRs are much easier to spot than tiny pocket sized cameras. Aligning the bulky camera with the image takes several seconds, long enough to notice what's going on and put a stop to it if you wish. Even if the infringer somehow manages to take the time to line up their bulky camera and take a good shot in bad lighting, it's not really a problem if the painting is signed on the front. Your name is still getting out there, and at the end of the day, more people will know about you and your work. Commercial reproduction, despite being the main reason artist's cite for prohibiting photography, seems like a very unlikely possibility. It is far more likely that they would go to the nice well-lit professional shots on your website, or on the gallery's website to get those images. I know of a case where reproductions were being taken from a book about an artist's work. The pages were literally torn out, framed and sold as prints. Preventing infringement from your website is easy-upload low resolution images. But preventing infringement from a book? I'll have to work on solving that one. I'm sure there are reasons for photographing artworks that I haven't considered. I've looked at all the situations I know about for wanting to snap a few pictures of art, and I don't see any good reasons to prevent that kind of photographing and sharing from happening. Having people documenting and sharing images your work is a form of word-of-mouth advertising. It gets your name out there, raising awareness. That can only be a good thing. Having someone snap a picture to see if your work fits with their home may lead to a future sale. That's a good thing. Having someone commercially reproduce your work sucks. But it's so unlikely that they could get a usable photo from a gallery, I don't see it happening. I believe the benefits from the former vastly outweigh the risks of the latter. That's why I don't bother with any fancy image protection schemes on my website. I have yet to be convinced that it's worth the effort.

Good Ideas for Protecting Your Images

After my last entry, Bad Ideas for Protecting Your Images, you might be thinking that I am against the idea of artists protecting their work. Absolutely not. I am only against bad ideas that either won’t work, are likely cost far more than they are worth, or will irritate your audience and potentially drive potential collectors away. Most of the methods I criticized earlier have some sort of negative impact on the audience. They take away from a viewer’s ability to enjoy the work while giving them nothing extra in return. The image protection methods that I would encourage make life easier for viewers.

Best of all, my recommendations are fairly cheap, quick and practical.
Read the rest of this entry »

After my last entry, Bad Ideas for Protecting Your Images, you might be thinking that I am against the idea of artists protecting their work. Absolutely not. I am only against bad ideas that either won't work, are likely cost far more than they are worth, or will irritate your audience and potentially drive potential collectors away. Most of the methods I criticized earlier have some sort of negative impact on the audience. They take away from a viewer's ability to enjoy the work while giving them nothing extra in return. The image protection methods that I would encourage make life easier for viewers. Best of all, my recommendations are fairly cheap, quick and practical. 1. GOOD FILE NAMES When I am looking for inspiration, I like to browse art websites and download many of the samples provided, so I can look at or analyze them later on. Problems emerge when I download multiple files named "01.JPG". First of all, I'm lazy, so I will typically rename these "01a.JPG", 01b.JPG" "01c.JPG", and so on. This slows me down and frustrates me; it takes my mind away from enjoying the art and makes me focus on computer file-management stuff. That's not why I'm looking at art. This naming scheme also makes it very hard for me to identify the artist in the future. When the artists name is included in the file, I will remember that, and I might look for more of their work in the future. I am more likely to remember them, talk about them, or recommend them to others who are looking for cool art. If you check out any if the images in my own gallery, you will notice that the filename is usually something like this: "k_clements_paintingname.jpg" This way, my name is attached to the image, so if it does get passed around, at least their is a good chance of my name being remembered and passed around with the image. This, along with proper use of EXIF data turns file sharing into free word-of-mouth advertising. 2. EXIF DATA Embrace EXIF Data! EXIF is a little piece of metadata that is attached to your image files. It should be added automatically by a digital camera, or by any newer image editing software. Things like the time and date, camera settings, camera brand/model, and some other information are contained within the EXIF data. Be warned: devices with GPS functionality might record information about the location where the picture was taken. For privacy reasons, you might want to erase that part. My Nikon is programed to add "(c) 2010 Kyle Clements www.kyleclements.com" to each image that I take. (Well, actually, it's programmed to add "(c) 2008" to my images. I should probably get around to updating that.) With good EXIF data, even if the downloader chooses to rename the image for some reason, my name and a link to my personal site are still attached to the file. 3. FILE SIZE You can't print what you don't have. Print quality is limited by image resolution. Work simply cannot be reproduced or printed commercially if the resolution is too low. Therefore, if you are really worried about your images being downloaded and re-printed, only display low-resolution images on your site. My images are usually around 600 X 400. These sizes load fairly fast in a browser, even on slower connections, yet they are are big enough to allow the paintings to be seen clearly. They are also too small for prints larger than 3" X 4". It's a simple, free, and easy method for preventing my work from being printed out, and it makes life easier for the audience, because they don't have to wait for a massive image to load. New ideas and technologies will inevitably emerge, quickly rendering any list specific examples obsolete, so adopting a simple, technology-neutral attitude that can adapt with the times is critical. Before implementing any sort of image protection, ask yourself, "will this enhance a viewer's experience, or will it just get in their way?". If the answer is the latter, pass on it, and look for something else.

Bad Ideas for Protecting Your Images

The last several posts have been inspired by a conversation I had with several recent graduates at the 2010 OCAD grad show.
Their work was good, and I was interested in seeing more. When I asked if images of their work was available on their websites, I discovered that they both refused to show any samples of their work on-line due to fears of copyright infringement. This struck me as backwards. Hiding their art from the world seems like the exact opposite of what any young, emerging artist should want.

One of the artists said that he had every intension of making his work available, but he would only do this once he had figured out some technical copy-protection tools.
In this entry, I will discuss my objections to several different technical copy-restriction techniques, and propose some examples of what I think are better alternatives.
Read the rest of this entry »

The last several posts have been inspired by a conversation I had with several recent graduates at the 2010 OCAD grad show. Their work was good, and I was interested in seeing more. When I asked if images of their work was available on their websites, I discovered that they both refused to show any samples of their work on-line due to fears of copyright infringement. This struck me as backwards. Hiding their art from the world seems like the exact opposite of what any young, emerging artist should want. One of the artists said that he had every intension of making his work available, but he would only do this once he had figured out some technical copy-protection tools. In this entry, I will discuss my objections to several different technical copy-restriction techniques, and propose some examples of what I think are better alternatives. There are a number of technical solutions a worried artist could employ in their attempt to prevent infringement, but none of these methods actually work all that well to stop it. They can only make obtaining that content a little more inconvenient. Locked content gives me the impression that the artist is telling me, "I don't trust you, I think you are a thief". Frankly, I find that attitude from an artist insulting. If that's how they are, I quickly lose any interest in the work. Remember that line from Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights, "If you're not first, you're last"? In the land of all things digital, this quote very much applies. If protection isn't 100% effective, then it's 0% effective. It only takes one person to break that protection for the whole world to have access. In an earlier entry, I used the analogy of pushing a giant boulder uphill to describe digital copy protection. It only takes one little slip, and it all comes rolling back right where it started. BAD IDEAS FOR PROTECTION 1. DISABLE RIGHT CLICK Once such method of making life difficult for copiers is disabling the 'right click' ability in the browser, so visitors to your website can't 'copy image' or 'save image as'. This is done by adding a little piece of javascript to the web page. This code 'hijacks' the typical right click action, making something else happen instead, like a pop-up window that says "This function has been disabled on this site". So, if you are worried about infringement, is disabling right click a good idea? Well, no. There are some problems with this: Javascript can be disabled in the browser's settings, and can also be blocked by popular plug-ins, such as No-Script. Older versions of Internet Explorer had a bug where the user could hold down the left button for several seconds, then click the right button, this would disable the 'right click' prevention, and the file could be downloaded with ease. After learning of this bug, some may be tempted to think, "But this bug is fixed on newer browsers". At this point I would like to draw your attention to the top right hand corner of your computer's keyboard. You might notice a button that's been hanging out with the 'scroll lock' 'Pause/Break' and other mostly-useless keys. The one I'm talking about is labelled 'Print screen'. And what does this 'Print Screen' button do? Why, it prints what's on the screen! The user can load any page, hit this button, and the image is saved to their desktop. While it might require some cropping later on, they still very much have a copy of that image that you fought so very hard to prevent from being copied. And, since this is digital, it only takes one person to go though this hassle, and they can share and distribute it with ease. Blocking the right-click ability used to be fairly common, but I am seeing less-and-less of it these days. I'm not sure if the reason for this is that people simply aren't blocking right-click anymore, or if the No-Script plugin I've installed is blocking this piece of javascript from working, (meaning the protection has been disabled) Either way, I'm glad I'm not seeing much of it these days, since I right-click fairly often as I navigate, so having that functionality disabled is very irritating and feels limiting. 2. WATERMARKS I am undecided on the issue of watermarks. I've seen them done well, and I've seen them ruin an image. A watermark covering a rather blank area can be edited out with ease, rendering it useless, while a watermark over a complex area is distracting, because it is very likely covering part of the image that the viewer would like to see. As a viewer, these kinds of watermarks turn me off. I won't go in too much detail, but I would suggest that watermarks, if used, should be kept subtle and as unobtrusive as possible. I'm ok with having your name appear in an image, but it shouldn't take over that image. 3. IMAGE PROTECTION SERVICES There are some far more sophisticated options available to the determined content-protectors these days. Once such service is Image Rights , which scours the web, looking for and notifying the image owner of any potential infringement, despite any cropping, resizing, or slight modifications made to the image. The homepage advertises a simple 3 step process: Upload your images to their site. They scan millions of websites looking for a match, then send you the reports. I do like how this does not take away from a user's ability to enjoy the work in any way, but I have objections to this as well. First, it's a little ironic that a service being offered to people who are concerned about their images being copied requires that they make copies of each image in order to protect them from being copied. These are paid services. For a successful late-career artist, something like this could be worthwhile. If prints are bringing in more than what they charge, and infringement is taking a significant chunk out of those earnings, then it might be worth considering something like this. I am not currently aware of any other brands offering a similar service, but at $10 to $40 dollars per month for this, the images had better be worth a good chunk of change. As I think about this service, there is one question that I keep coming back to: "is it worth the cost?" For many artists, that answer is likely 'no'. 4 INCLUDING A NOTICE Including a copyright notice with an artwork is one solution I've heard several photographers suggest. While it is important that people understand the copyright issues that surround an artwork, I just don't like this idea, because I've seen it executed so poorly so often. "You can't do this. You can't to that. If you want to do this, contact me and I might let you do it, but I might also demand that you pay me an additional fee" This just seems petty, like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. I want to deal with someone who has a passion for what they do, not someone who expects yet another paycheque every time you look at or think about the artwork. As a painter, I am somewhat protected from many reproduction issues. A photograph is very different from an original painting. The texture of the canvas and paint, the difference in luminosity and opacity, the intense pigment-based colour, all these qualities are unique to paint, and just can't be replicated in print without something being lost. But a copy of a photograph? Any photograph is just a copy of a negative or image file, what separates one photographic print from another? I can understand their concern. If you do chose to go down this route, I would suggest that the notice be worded very carefully. None of these protection methods actually work against those who are really determined to copy stuff, and it insults the the much larger segment of the audience that just wants to see your work. The copiers still get their copies, and the real fans just get pissed off. It's a lose-lose situation.

My Take on “A Copyright Story”

           My last post, Copyright From an Artist’s Perspective was inspired by a fantastic blog entry I had read about a month ago. I came across an article by an artist on the subject of copyright, and while it does fall into some of the same old traps of mixing up moral, legal and economic realities, it also introduces some great new ideas. I knew it was a good entry because it made me sit, and think, and question many of my own preconceptions. Although my opinion hasn’t changed, anything that shakes me like that got to have some kind of power, and his message should be shared.
           I threw together a quick post for my tumblr account, to help me clear my head and sort my thoughts. This article builds upon that one.

           In the copyright debate, I have found the first article from ‘the other side’ that I think actually gets some things right. Jason Robert Brown had an excellent blog entry titled “FIGHTING WITH TEENAGERS: A COPYRIGHT STORY”.
(the follow-up post might be even better, but I’m not going to get into any of those ideas right here.)

           So, I’ll begin by telling the story of what happened. Mr. Brown found a bunch of his content on a file-sharing site. His work was being pirated. Rather than suing his fans (which is very stupid) he created an account on a file sharing site, identified the people who were distributing his content, and he very politely asked them to stop. He went though everyone offering up his content, and on an individual basis, he sent them a message asking them to stop. He was polite and professional about it (which is smart). I think it’s really cool of him to go and do this himself, and I think it was very good of him to explain that he is not ok with his content being shared like that, and many people stopped right away. He made a convincing moral argument, and most people listened. Most people. Not everyone.
Read the rest of this entry »

           My last post, Copyright From an Artist’s Perspective was inspired by a fantastic blog entry I had read about a month ago. I came across an article by an artist on the subject of copyright, and while it does fall into some of the same old traps of mixing up moral, legal and economic realities, it also introduces some great new ideas. I knew it was a good entry because it made me sit, and think, and question many of my own preconceptions. Although my opinion hasn't changed, anything that shakes me like that got to have some kind of power, and his message should be shared.            I threw together a quick post for my tumblr account, to help me clear my head and sort my thoughts. This article builds upon that one.            In the copyright debate, I have found the first article from ‘the other side’ that I think actually gets some things right. Jason Robert Brown had an excellent blog entry titled “FIGHTING WITH TEENAGERS: A COPYRIGHT STORY”. (the follow-up post might be even better, but I'm not going to get into any of those ideas right here.)            So, I'll begin by telling the story of what happened. Mr. Brown found a bunch of his content on a file-sharing site. His work was being pirated. Rather than suing his fans (which is very stupid) he created an account on a file sharing site, identified the people who were distributing his content, and he very politely asked them to stop. He went though everyone offering up his content, and on an individual basis, he sent them a message asking them to stop. He was polite and professional about it (which is smart). I think it's really cool of him to go and do this himself, and I think it was very good of him to explain that he is not ok with his content being shared like that, and many people stopped right away. He made a convincing moral argument, and most people listened. Most people. Not everyone.            The meat of the blog entry is a very good exchange between Jason Robert Brown and a teenage girl who quite obviously gets her information from the anti-strong copyright perspective. She has obviously read up on the issue quite a bit, and their exchange is very much worth reading. A teenager makes a number of solid arguments, and she holds her own; while Brown, an experienced adult, actually listens to what she has to say, treats her with respect, and argues back. It's a wonderful exchange. The comments section is long, and many more excellent points are brought up, and Brown addressed nearly every comment in a thoughtful way.            I agree very strongly with his argument that artists should have a choice whether their work is distributed freely or not. But it’s the whole is vs. ought argument. Sure, you ought to be able to choose what is done with your work, but when that content is digital, well, good luck with that. How do you police the distribution of digital content without massive privacy violations? You would have to devise a system that is essentially breaking the internet as we know it, and forcing strict restrictions on all connected technologies, then rebuilding everything from the ground up. So yes, you ought to have that choice, but realistically, you don’t. It’s out there, it’s free, and it is naive to think otherwise.            Since artists don't have a choice in the matter, a question arises, "is trying to slow down the flow of digitized creative content the right choice for an artist to make?"            In 2006, Tim O'Reilly of the O'Reilly publishing company posted some of his thoughts on piracy up on his blog. All of his points are worth giving some serious consideration, but the first one is the most powerful. "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy." When people are pirating your work, that means that they know about your work, they know about you, and they want it. They want what you make. They want what you do. Demand can be monetized. Obscurity, on the other hand, cannot be monetized. Imagine how bad it must feel if no one, not even a single person wants your work, even if they can get it for free.            "It's very hard to monetise fame, but impossible to monetise obscurity" Cory Doctorow has made this point the foundation of his increasingly successful career. He has found success by letting people download his books for free on his own website, while also giving them the option to buy copies, as well. Obviously, his approach won’t work for everyone. And his name seems like the only one mentioned in this context, so it is quite possible that his success could be seen as the exception that proves the rule. Also, as he has himself admitted, if more people experiment with free, the beneficial effects will likely be diluted.            While Doctorow's name may be the first name to come up in your search results as an example of artists using free to increase sales, he isn't the only one to do so. Author Paulo Coelho also had some luck with free, after uploading the Russian translation to a file sharing site, his sales climbed from about a thousand per year to a million per year.            O'Reilly also suggests another way of thinking about Piracy, as "progressive taxation." Emerging artists need to get their name out there, and piracy is huge benefit during this stage of the career. Getting songs into people's ipods, or PDFs on their desktops is a primary concern. Established artists, on the other hand, don't struggle with the same obscurity issues, and for them piracy represents lost sales. Piracy doesn't necessarily threaten business and publishing, it threatens established businesses and established publishers.            This is all well and good, and Brown address all this; some artists want to use free to advertise their work, but he doesn't, and artists should have that choice. Again, I agree with his moral argument. Artists should be able to make that choice, but they don't.            Remember how his great moral argument convinced most people to stop distributing his content, and even though most people listened, well, some didn't. They are still offering those digital files, and that means that anyone can still get his content. Digital files are infinitely reproducible, so even if he were able to convince every single person on Earth, except one, then everyone still has access to it. It only takes one single person to offer up the file for the whole world to still have access to it.            The question remains: when your work is already out there, when it’s already free, when people who want to infringe, and are able to infringe, there is nothing you can do to stop it. As an artist, you still want to get paid for your work, and you should get paid for it. So, what is the right course of action?            If you have even the slightest interest in copyright, no mater which side you take on the issue, it is very well worth reading this blog entry.

Copyright From an Artist’s Perspective

          I have been following the copyfight since the days of Napster (that’s 11 years now). Despite being an artist myself, I have always instinctively sided with the more anti-strong copyright leanings of the tech crowd. This seems to put my opinion at odds with most of the other artists I encounter. I am slowly learning that my stance on copyright isn’t something that can be politely discussed among artists.

          “Information wants to be free” is the meme that best captures the gist of the free-culture perspective. That quote is only a small part of what Stewart Brand actually said at the first Hackers’ Conference in 1984. The full quote was, “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other”. By “free” Brand was talking more about control than he was about price. But, over time, the exact meaning and extra words were dropped, and “Information wants to be free” is what people remember.

          I have never been the slightest bit convinced by any of the arguments from the side pushing for stronger enforcement and stronger copyright law. The copyright debate reads almost like arguments from the evolution/creationism ‘debate’; one side has logic, reason, and an ever-growing body of evidence, while the other side has charisma, wilful ignorance, and very deep pockets.

          In the copyright debate, I am drawn to the techy side because their arguments actually follow, they eschew passion and emotion and focus on the cold hard reality. They focus on what is. The supporters of strong copyright tend to focus on what ought to be. The heated nature of the debate comes from what I think is a misunderstanding of the other side’s position. People on the pro-copyright side are making moral arguments about what people should do, while those on the anti-strong-copyright side are making economic arguments about what people actually are doing.

          I’ve just never found these moral arguments to be the least bit convincing. File trading is out there, it happens, and it can’t be stopped anytime soon in the foreseeable future. Telling people that they shouldn’t share files because, “it’s wrong”, doesn’t really do anything to solve the problem.

          My stance on the issue is this: If we artists are supposed to be such creative people, why don’t we stop fighting piracy, and come up with new ways of doing things that use file sharing to our advantage?

          I have been following the copyfight since the days of Napster (that's 11 years now). Despite being an artist myself, I have always instinctively sided with the more anti-strong copyright leanings of the tech crowd. This seems to put my opinion at odds with most of the other artists I encounter. I am slowly learning that my stance on copyright isn't something that can be politely discussed among artists.           “Information wants to be free” is the meme that best captures the gist of the free-culture perspective. That quote is only a small part of what Stewart Brand actually said at the first Hackers' Conference in 1984. The full quote was, "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other". By "free" Brand was talking more about control than he was about price. But, over time, the exact meaning and extra words were dropped, and "Information wants to be free" is what people remember.           I have never been the slightest bit convinced by any of the arguments from the side pushing for stronger enforcement and stronger copyright law. The copyright debate reads almost like arguments from the evolution/creationism ‘debate’; one side has logic, reason, and an ever-growing body of evidence, while the other side has charisma, wilful ignorance, and very deep pockets.           In the copyright debate, I am drawn to the techy side because their arguments actually follow, they eschew passion and emotion and focus on the cold hard reality. They focus on what is. The supporters of strong copyright tend to focus on what ought to be. The heated nature of the debate comes from what I think is a misunderstanding of the other side's position. People on the pro-copyright side are making moral arguments about what people should do, while those on the anti-strong-copyright side are making economic arguments about what people actually are doing.           I've just never found these moral arguments to be the least bit convincing. File trading is out there, it happens, and it can't be stopped anytime soon in the foreseeable future. Telling people that they shouldn't share files because, "it's wrong", doesn't really do anything to solve the problem.           My stance on the issue is this: If we artists are supposed to be such creative people, why don't we stop fighting piracy, and come up with new ways of doing things that use file sharing to our advantage?