If I “dedicate” a digital photo to the public domain, have I dedicated the specific arrangement of pixels that make up that photo—or have I dedicated the more general visual image, the concept of that photo, if you will?
In the case of the former, can I change a single pixel, in a way that’s practically imperceptible to the human eye, but verifiably different (from a mathematical standpoint), and reclaim copyright of that photo (thus effectively removing it from the public domain)? Can I resize a photo and relicense it under different terms?
In the case of the latter, does public domain status follow any trivial transformation of that photo, such as resizing, cropping, or color adjustment? If I were to relicense that photo, would I be stealing or cheating the public? Would I be doing something “illegal”? Just as in the application of Fair Use, perhaps a legal determination would need to be made on the transformative nature of any new work based on public domain material.
If I remove the photos from the internet, does that have a demonstrable effect on the public domain? Does it matter if they were not all very good? If I possess a copy of some public domain material that someone wants, do they have any right to request that I give them a copy? Is it legal for someone to hoard the last copy of some public domain material? Is it moral?
When I first came around to the idea of licensing my photos under a more permissive scheme than copyright, I was immediately attracted to the concept of dedicating them to the public domain because it seemed to be the least restrictive means to give others unfettered access to my “creations”. Honestly I felt very fortunate to have traveled and seen what I did, and I wanted to share that with as many people as possible. It was only later after reading some things, that I realized in some ways the “public domain” is not all it’s cracked up to be.
The truth is, with my galleries having been on the internet, some for a period of over 6 years, numerous web crawlers have cached copies of both the images as well as the surrounding license information that indicated their public domain status. On one hand I don’t want to go through the trouble of indicating that certain resized images republished in new or existing blog posts were in the public domain (and not others). Partly because I’m not even sure if that is necessarily true. And on the other hand, I don’t want to get that email in the future where someone digs up a photo from my galleries lodged somewhere in the bowels of the Wayback Machine and calls bullshit on its new By-Attribution license.
In that case, I would just point them to this post. And honor the original public domain status.
I don’t even begin to know how to search for a solution to this problem, let alone fix it. Maybe just by forcing myself to describe it, I’ll see through to a solution. If not, then I hope there’s someone out there who might be able to point me in the right direction.
For most people this image should be a creamy smooth gradient from pure white to pure black
On my Lenovo X200 running an up to date install of Ubuntu’s Intrepid Ibex, I too see a smooth gradient—except on the far right, where it should be super dark gray just before the black, my screen breaks out in a case of adolescent 8-bit dithering.
Here’s a macro shot of my screen of what I seeHere’s a 100% crop of the shot above with contrast applied
I can tell you one thing, it makes editing photos with dark areas really really annoying.
I’d been working as a web producer at O’Reilly for about a year when I got an IM sometime in April 2006 from ex-coworker Tony Stubblebine. He asked if I knew any good web developers who were looking for a job. I replied, “You mean other than me?”
Tony had left O’Reilly a few months earlier to start as director of engineering at Odeo. So in hush-hush fashion I went down to the city for an interview. Actually it was multiple interviews over the span of several hours. It was a little intimidating, but also exhilarating. I learned a lot. Most importantly I realized that this was exactly the kind of environment I wanted to be working in.
I also learned that they were hiring because two of the Odeo engineers were off working on a side-project called twttr. I don’t even think it was available in beta at the time, but Tony said he’d hook me up.
Apparently everyone gave me the thumbs up, so it was up to Evan Williams to actually approve the hire. This is where it gets interesting. Tony had recently moved into a new house, and was throwing a housewarming party that weekend. Ev was supposed to be there, as was I, so he figured why not just kill two birds with one stone? The only challenge, as I learned the moment I walked in the door, was that the party was attended by most of the people I worked with at O’Reilly, and most of the people I’d interviewed with at Odeo. I recall a few awkward how-do-you-know-so-and-so moments, but for the most part the two groups kept to themselves, and I was able to navigate between them.
Towards the end of the party, Ev and I sat down together, and had a perfectly nice chat. It seemed to go really well. It was funny to discover later that the event was captured on Ev’s girlfriend’s Flickr stream in the form of a ristebilder (or headshaker) photo:
Meanwhile, back at work, I started getting these, well, annoying text messages from Tony telling me what he was doing. I remember something about strawberries and a minivan. I was annoyed mostly because every text message I received cost me ten cents, but also because I didn’t want to be drawing attention to the fact that I had recently interviewed at Odeo. I also admit I didn’t really see the point. So I unsubscribed myself.
Later I found out from Tony that Ev had approved my hire, but that the Odeo board had instituted a hiring freeze. It was like learning I’d been hired and fired in the same email. Thankfully I didn’t dwell. It wasn’t long before I found Federated Media, and the rest is history.
