From: zrepachol@cc.curtin.edu.au (Paul Repacholi)
Subject: Re: Time to boycott Photo CD YES!
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 12:10:11 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.191008.8372@kodak.kodak.com>, axman@acadia.Kodak.COM (Mike Axman) writes:
> In article <1992Aug27.173045.4694@m.cs.uiuc.edu>, hasker@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Rob Hasker) writes:
>>jgd@dixie.com (John De Armond) writes:
>>
>>>ajayshah@almaak.usc.edu (Ajay Shah) writes:
>>>
>>>>Kodak wants to tie up the file formats under lock and key.  You can't
>>>>write a program to open their files.  You can't even write a program
>>>>which generates their files.  Don't expect to ever see interfaces
>>>>between Photo CD and pbm or TeX.  If you write a neat program which
>>>>does XXX to a file in Kodak format, you can't give that program to
>>>>anyone else.
>>>
>>>>The only people who can read/write the Photo CD files are commercial
>>>>vendors who pay Kodak royalties.
>>>
>>>As an enthusiastic photographer and user who is waiting on this product 
>>>with bated breath, I say "who cares?"
>>
Do you mean care now, or care later? See below.

>>Look at what happened with Nintendo.  Nintendo successfully sued people
>>who decoded the cartridge interface so they could make and sell their own
>>Nintendo-compatible games.  The result is that the price of Nintendo
>>games is _much_ higher than it would be if there was legal competition.
>>Do you really want to go to Kodak for _every_ image manipulation program?
>>
See Below...

> 
> There are already many developers who've been licensed to develop applications
> for Photo CD, and Kodak will probably write VERY LITTLE of the image 
> manipulation software that will ultimately be available.  I would even go so 
> far as to guess that Kodak couldn't care less about computer jocks and hobbiests
> who want to hack through the format without getting a license.  But if they 
> try to make a product which uses it to make money, they must pay.  
Have a *GOOD* look at the 'Open Sky' treaties, Landsat and Spot. first we have
an international agreement of open access to satelite data, and Landsat digital
data avail at about cost of media/copying. Then the price of digital data is
put through the roof. As a next step, Spot demands royalties *FROM THE END USE*.
If you follow this through to Photo CD or simular...

Foobar licences others to write software useing his file format. He then
descides that since it is so popular, he will require him licensies to collect
a 'per use' fee from the end users. Then he notices a lot of artists are using
it and selling their work. Next step is to require a percentage royalty of the
sale price of all copies of the work sold, or a cut of the companies sales from
the ad campagn...

> Photo CD is not tiff, or pbm, or emacs.  
> Why don't we just tell everyone the details of our emulsion designs while 
> we're at it.  Patents and licenses are a reality of the current corporate
> climate.
> 

A patent requires disclosure to the public. If I reverse engineer Ektar 25, and
use that info, unless it is disclosed in a patent, stiff. Or I can read the
patent and cut a deal...

> Kodak is not in the business of altruism; we are not a university.  
> A lot of time, effort, and proprietary sweat was put into the 
> compression/file-format of the hi-res data to achieve good image quality 
> and decent data reduction.  I know, I worked on it and I sweat alot :-) 
> Just like Dolby, we want to protect and "milk" that effort for all we can.

I will let the gentle reader comptemplate who is the cow in this.

> 
> There are many reasons for this, including the need to maintain some kind of 
> control over the image quality issues.  If "joe blow" decides to hack together 
> a Photo CD transfer service, and he's doesn't do the compression correctly, 
> or decides not to write the hi-res data (it's much faster), his cost savings
> will ultimately hurt Kodak.  Licensing is one way to keep tabs on quality.

Horse shit. Exactaly the same would apply to *ALL* of photography. Do Kodak
require people to prove their 'quality' before they buy film. Tested the quality
of a Kodak lab recently?

> 
> Sounds like what a lot of you want is just a system which scans and writes 
> raw data (uncompressed with no resolution hierarchy) to a write-once media.
> Or perhaps you want JPEG compression.  Maybe somebody will offer this option.
> (probably not Fuji since they're on our side in this argument)
> Keep in mind, however, that a JPEG'd image at full resolution would have to 
> go though AN ENORMOUS amount of processing to display to TV; there goes your
> affordable player strategy.  Also, a JPEG'd image digitally zoomed a bit, 
> shows nasty DCT blocking artifacts; there goes the "digital negative"
> philosophy.
What 'nasty artifacts' are hidden in the Kodak algorithms that we haven't been
told about? 

> 
> There are a lot of CD audio enthusiasts who feel the same way about Sony and 
> Philips, but I don't think the industry has suffered too much as a result.
> 

I have the 'Red Book' and friends. Free from Philips years ago. ALL the info on
formats ect... readily avail to anyone. The result of this is MANY people use
the format, and it becomes enormusly popular, and profitable.


I for one am looking forward to CDing *MY* images, and describing the full
details of the encoding of MY image on MY disk. I invite others to do the same.

~Paul