RANT: best argument for a wet over a digital process

[Socke]

Copyright laws are to be changed in germany with more protection for copyright owners and better payment for authors etc.

That means, every device and all consumables usable for personal copies of copyrighted content sold in germany will have, or better have, charges for several organisations collecting money for copyright owners on it.

So in a digital workflow you pay charges for the scanner to "VG Wort" because with a scanner one can copy books, you pay charges to "VG Wort" and "GEMA" for every writeable CD or DVD because you could store scanned books or music on it, you pay for the CD-burner as well and you pay for the printer and ink and paper because, ok you got the gist.

For every picture I scan, save to a cd and print on my inkjet printer, I pay royalties to organisations who give whatever is left after their own cost to some unknown artist who has nothing to do with my work.

The best thing is, only copyright holders who are registered with these organisations and who use DRM are reimbursed. I pay for media which may be used to store copies which I can't make since the original is copy protected and breaking copy protection is a criminal offence, and I won't get any money back because I'm neither a registred copyright holder nor use DRM on my archives.

Time for a Boston Teaparty :bang:

 

[markinlondon]

Just wait until the jpeg ownership case comes out. A royalty on every jpeg file, anyone?

Mark

 

[Socke]

Yeah, forgot the ownership of the files, they can't be mine after all.

As far as I know, there already is a charge on digital media like SD and CF cards and such.

 

[peterc]

Time to start making bootleg DVDs to cover the costs of all those royalty charges. 😀

Peter

 

[pedro.m.reis]

Never did the math, but, still with all those taxes, digital will be:
- cheaper;
- Faster;
- Enviroment friendly.

Well, the copyright on jpg may will force you to change to another (free) format.

BTW, i never did wet printing just because i cant in my actual house, nor i own a photo printer.

 

[beethamd]

Do the maths.

 

[XAos]

The two things that really frost me about shotgun royalties is 1) they typically get distributed by market sales. So if I rip off Little River Band, Sheryl Crow is actually getting the money. But even worse is that if The Federal Duck releases a CD they burned themselves in their Garage - they're shaving off and giving money to Eminem out of their own expenses (because they're not likely making any profit on it.)

2) At some level, the fact that I'm paying royalties means that implicit consent is given. They of course do not see it this way, but then they shouldn't sell out so cheap. If I'm being charged for it, I should be getting what I'm charged for. By accepting money because well, it's gonna happen anyway - they're undermining their platform for prosecution. Oh well, I can only hope the entire entertainment industry collapses on itself and leaves us to local bands and streetcorner musicians and a land where there is mass media but everybody plays something. We'd all be a lot richer for it.

 

[markinlondon]

Never did the math, but, still with all those taxes, digital will be:
- cheaper;
- Faster;
- Enviroment friendly.

Well, the copyright on jpg may will force you to change to another (free) format.

BTW, i never did wet printing just because i cant in my actual house, nor i own a photo printer.

Cheaper - with at least annual upgrades to hardware and software, ink at several hundred pounds a litre and paper at twice the price of Ilford Multigrade? NO. A PC also draws about three times the power of my enlarger.

Faster - maybe, I'm still working on this.

Environment friendly - well, no actually. I can recycle all the packaging from film and photographic paper except the black plastic bags which I reuse as free paper safes. All computer peripherals and supplies are overpackaged. In carbon accounting terms I use materials made in the UK, they travel under 200 miles to my darkroom. Computer peripherals and software are imported from the far east where they are made under who knows what kind of labour conditions. Plus where did the water under Silicon Valley go?

If there's money to be made on jpeg, who's going to introduce a free format for all? Also you are going to have to throw away all exisiting digital cameras as no one will support their native file format anymore. More landfill fodder.

Mark

 

[pedro.m.reis]

As i said, i dont own either a wet printing or digital printer.
I will do the math when i can have those systems 🙂.
I'm saying this because if you go to a pro lab, the wet printing is more expensive.... well at least here .....

Do the maths.

 

[dadsm3]

I don't know about others, but even allowing for film, chemicals and paper (several sheets to get the print I want), wet printing doesn't come close to digital printing pricewise. Anybody who's watched their $40 ink cartridge use up 20% on a single 8x10, then realize they should've tweaked it a bit, and want another one.....
Maybe others enjoy spending an hour in PS and then waiting for your printer to spit a print out at you....but IMHO wet printing is cheaper, nicer looking, and most importantly far more fun and satisfying.

 

[markinlondon]

Oh yeah, I've got faster now too.

I can have a work print out of my Nova tank in under five minutes including a test strip. If I count all the PS and printing time I'm looking at twice that. Maybe I should upgrade my PC and printer? No wait, that's why I built my darkroom. It was cheaper to buy all the kit than a new inkjet of the requisite quality. Add to that the time I would have spent reprofiling plus all the ink and paper costs, it's a no brainer (as the saying goes).

Mark

 

[Socke]

Inkjet printing is mostly colour, so don't compare it to B/W darkroom printing!

RA4 is far more expensive than B/W.

My inkjet is not realy suitable for photo printing, it's a Canon IP4000, but good enough if you need something fast to show around and there is no time to go over to the minilab or it is past business hours.

A 8x12 on usable glossy paper is under 2 Euro for me, I use thirdparty inks from Rotring at 22 Euro a 5 colour kit and Avery 110g A4 glossy paper at 9.99 Euro per 75 sheets.

The results are ok, not great but usable.


The Lyson Quad Black inks I used in an Epson Photo 750 printer with expensive fine art paper was another story. This is more expensive than wet printing on fibre based paper but easyer and faster. No need for a drying press 🙂
I print a lot of other stuff,

 

[Finder]

I never thought about the price per print, but RA4 breaks down to about $1USD/8x10 print or a little less for me. The chemistry is the larger share of that cost. But Japan is expensive. B&W is naturally cheaper.

 

[John Camp]

I think a lot of the copyright issues, and the .jpg ownership issues, and similar problems, will eventually be washed out by various legislatures and by other legal evasions -- there'll even be some international disagreements which will work to the benefit of the users. For example, you may have a law in Germany that says you have to pay extra for CDs to pay royalties, but you also have free trade with Denmark so you order your CDs from Denmark. If somebody gets a U.S. patent on .jpg, I seriously doubt that it'd be recognized in other areas. They'd simply pass a law that would say, "In our area, it's in the public domain, and it's not patentable." Since it's legally not enfroceable in some areas, it'd be difficult to enforce it anywhere. When it comes time to normalize all this stuff, about 2020 or 2030, the conflicts will be smoothed out in favor of the simplist answer. One of the problems that we have right now is the ignorance of the court system in technological matters, and in the courts' ignorance of the implications of some of the decisions. But they're slowly educating themselves, as seen recently in some federal courts in more stringent requirements of "scientific" proof and the examination of credentials of "experts." But all of these things are at their heart political, and that always takes time to work out.

JC

 

[sf]

Two more good reasons to print wet :

1. no inkdrops
2. no embedded serial numbers (I don't believe this, but some people are under the impression that printers embed their serial numbers into prints).
3. it just looks better, if you know what you're doing.

 

[oftheherd]

Two more good reasons to print wet :

1. no inkdrops
2. no embedded serial numbers (I don't believe this, but some people are under the impression that printers embed their serial numbers into prints).
3. it just looks better, if you know what you're doing.

As far as the serial numbers of printers go, I think that was only Xerox on some of their high end color printers (Edit: I mean high end commercial printers). As I recall, looking at the prints under a blue filter would tell you if the numbers were there if you knew where to look and knew the code (they were encoded as well).

Edit-2: If you scroll down the page here you will find the EFF information on this:

http://72.14.209.104/u/efforg?q=cac...inter+codes&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&ie=UTF-8

 

[oftheherd]

Socke - do I understand you to mean all media will be taxed to pay royalties just because they could be used for illicit copying? And that some entertainers or distributors get a part of the money taxed just in case there was copying, without proof there was?

Wow, sounds like there are other places that have the best legislators money can buy. 😀

 

[Socke]

Socke - do I understand you to mean all media will be taxed to pay royalties just because they could be used for illicit copying? And that some entertainers or distributors get a part of the money taxed just in case there was copying, without proof there was?

Wow, sounds like there are other places that have the best legislators money can buy. 😀

Not taxed, the producer has to pay for every item sold to private (!) organisations collecting money for their members. As a creator you can join those organisations for a fee. Believe it or not, a friend of mine is a parttime musician and registered with the "GEMA". If he performs his songs he has to pay the same fee to GEMA he would have to pay for performing anybody elses songs.

Mrs. Zypris, our secretary of justice, is a member of the Social Democrats, but her understanding of democracy is a bit weird as well as her understanding of social.

 

[ffttklackdedeng]

our secretary of justice, is a member of the Social Democrats, but her understanding of democracy is a bit weird as well as her understanding of social.

ROTFL!

Full ack, sad but true..

regards, Robert