News, views & muse from Her Majesty's coldest colony

In fields of pessimism, occasional seeds of hope

PLUS—Picture Licensing Universal System

At a CAPIC event last held night in CBC’s Glenn Gould Auditorium (and webcast across the country to CAPIC meetings and individuals), Jeff Sedlik was in TO to deliver to a nearly full house the most amazing news of the efforts of PLUS, the system he and his cross-industry cronies have been building the past decade for standardizing rights language and image licensing. The idea is to make it a no-brainer through technology so that all rights language and image licensing becomes as standard as IPTC meta data and systems like Panatone colours. It leaves one very hopeful, if also a bit skeptical about the rate of compliance and implementation that may occur, and of course presumes good will and integrity on the part of buyers which we know is far from the truth in many cases…but the ideas and method seem very solid.

According to PLUS’s website news, here are just three key items pulled from many:
IPTC Integrates PLUS Standards. The Board of Directors of the IPTC voted to approve a revision to the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard, incorporating a significant number of rights-related fields established in the PLUS Standards.

Adobe Announces CS4. PLUS Leadership Circle member Adobe Systems has announced Adobe® Photoshop® CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended. Look for PLUS “File Info” panels in an update to CS4.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 PLUS Plug-in Beta. Developer Timothy Armes begins beta testing of a plug-in that allows users of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 to embed PLUS metadata in image files.

  • Find It

  • Focus

    A fermentation (a.k.a. Compost) of media, technology, social justice, art and the environment as experienced on the ground through the eye of one Canadian photo documentarian, intended to help fertilize the zeitgeist and yield a mixed crop of new ideas surrounding civic engagement.

  • Origins

    Out on the land seeking moments and light, I’m often reminded of the similarity between the life and livelihood of a visual journalist/artist and that of the farmer.

  • To Wit

    “Well Ed, the Fishers had their auction last Saturday morning. I watched as the neighbourhood descended on the place and picked it clean. After it was over, and the Fishers had driven off to their new house in town, the auctioneer walked over the property with me. His name’s Freddy. Interesting chap, friendly and outgoing. Runs a beef and dairy herd on the farm next door, plants corn, grain, potatoes, turnips, does auction sales some blacksmithing, small auto repairs and real estate. What I believe is called mixed farming.”

    Letters from Wingfield Farm, ©1989 Douglas Beattie. (Act 1) Wingfield Farm

  • Ongoing Investigations

    • The Meaning of Land
    • Rurality
    • The Nexus of Technology,
       Implimentation and Power in
       Visual Communication
    • Legacies of Colonialism
    • Sustainability vs. Resilience in
       Socio-Ecological Systems

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