Thu Mar
11.10
How is the digital world changing intellectual properties? Are the rules changing from copyright protection to copy right? How will this effect your art?
http://www.copyrightaction.com/forum/uk-gov-nationalises-orphans-and-bans-non-consensual-photography-in-public?page=1
Comments:
Daniel: The storm is a’comin”!
Angela: If they can do this in the UK what’s to stop them from raping the Flickr accounts of anyone in the world?
Daniel: Once in a while I post pictures of my artwork–now I worry somebody can swipe ‘em and I’ll see my image on a box of pasta at the grocers or on the cover of a magazine. Yikes!
Oliver: This is outrageous! some weeks ago I discovered that an illustration of mine was used by a provider in New Zealand for an article in which he was promoting his services. He claimed that even after extensive research in some “common licenses database” he wasn’t able to track down the ownership, and therefore assumed it was public domain. (Yeah, whatever…)
Ken: But the problem is most illustrators have no interest in this issue. I fear that they will not really take an interest until it is too late to do something. In our country one artist’s group has even used Foreign Reprographics money to fund support for a lobbyist to help “pass” an Orphan works bill.
~
This use of those foreign fees are artist’s royalties that should go to the artists who created the work.
In my mind, this is criminal and should provoke outrage among the artist community.
Before we know it, everything will be free
artwork: Penelope Dullaghan
Thu Mar
11.10
Facebook Inc. is worth almost 10 times as much as Twitter Inc., in the latest effort to place values on startups that haven’t gone public or been acquired.
SharesPost, a marketplace for trading in private companies, said that values of shares trading in Facebook peg its worth at $11.5 billion. That’s roughly the same value reported when Russian investors took a reported $300 million stake in the social networking company in December.
The index placed a value of $1.44 billion on the micro blogging success of Twitter, which is less than the $2.61 billion value it placed on Zynga Game Network Inc., the San Francisco creator of the popular Farmville game on Facebook.
Other companies with values estimated at more than $1 billion were professional networking company LinkedIn Corp. of Mountain View - $1.3 billion - and Palo Alto-based Tesla Motors - $1.28 billion.
Virtual world company Linden Labs was valued at $383 million and green construction supplier Serious Materials Inc. of Sunnyvale was valued at $227 million.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2010/03/01/daily84.html?ana=from_rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bizj_sanjose+(Silicon+Valley+%2F+San+Jose+Business+Journal)
Mon Mar
8.10
65 designers take the Myers-Briggs personality test, offering a window into the way designers actually think–and the meaning of “design thinking.”
Designers love to debate about what personality type makes for the best designer. So Michael Roller took the extra step of getting a bunch of designers to take the Myers Briggs personality test, and published the results in a chart:
Let’s ignore all the details (and the hideous, illegible pie chart at the bottom), and zoom in on the two clearest trends: 85% of respondents were “intuiting” types, while 69% were “judging.” By itself that’s not particularly useful. But those two personality traits offer a good insight into what “design thinking” might actually consist of.
According to the test, those that “intuit” rather than “sense” tend to focus on context and future developments, rather than simply the data at hand. Meanwhile, those that “judge” rather than “perceive” tend to see the world in terms of discrete problems that can be structured and cracked, rather than as a series of casual, open-ended possibilities.
In other words, designers are less akin to the stereotypical touchy-feely artist, and more like engineers who always keep the big picture in mind.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1557979/what-personality-type-makes-the-best-designer
Mon Mar
8.10
Ceramics have had a renaissance lately–there’s Spanish surrealist designer Jaime Hayon’s work for the venerable porcelain manufacturer Lladró, Atelier NL’s gorgeous locally-sourced Drawn From Clay series, or Vienna’s 250-year-old Augarten porcelain factory partnering with new-school designers like Marei Wollersberger.
As funky as those projects look, they’re all made with traditional methods. Today’s ceramics might look cool, but the techniques haven’t changed much in a few hundred years. But just as it has…uh…revolutionized footwear, 3-D printing has saved ceramics.
The folks at the Belgian design studio Unfold just announced they’ve successfully printed a ceramic bowl with a home-grown 3-D printer. What’s cool about this is that the bowl they made–double-walled with supporting ridges inside–would’ve been near impossible to make the old-fashioned way but was a piece of cake to print. Hold onto your good China, grandma–the future is now.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1558081/3-d-printed-pottery-not-your-grandmas-china
Thu Mar
4.10
A few weeks past, NPR had an interesting story about Chrysler going after a Florida High School for using a logo very close to the Chrysler Ram. What they forgot to mention is that the school’s logo in question is exactly the same as Chrysler’s.
Someone obviously got the piece of art (either legally or downloaded from the internet) and went to town with it. A simple Google search or question to the person who submitted the art would have avoided all this mess. Where was the school’s lawyer?
Personally, I think the principal missed a valuable opportunity to help the kids understand a valuable artistic and moral lesson. A lesson that is becoming more and more relevant these days– trademark infringement, what a brand really means, and oh yes, taking responsibility.
As equally disturbing as the blatant ripping-off, is that the principle and the Lake Mary school system seem to be enabling students’ misguided criticisms of who they deem to be the bad guys. This should not be a pity party. If the table was turned and a company was found to be using an original logo or icon developed by Lake Mary High School, the school system would have every right to force the company to stop the usage.
It’s definitely a “teachable moment” for the principal, the students and the community, and it was lost. Perhaps we should use this as an example.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123781334
http://www.breitbart.tv/dodge-sues-florida-school-over-logo/
http://www.clickorlando.com/news/22413663/detail.html
