Mind-blowing software with equally troubling potential for misuse...

[Kino]

Here is something to put in your philosophical pipe and smoke:

Dead Link Removed

The potential issues of privacy, copyright and data persistence this software raises are staggering.

Even more reasons to consider establishing an isolated intranet with strict access policies for archives (personal or otherwise) of imagery that are sensitive in one way or another; it doesn't matter if they are digital-born or scans of film or paper.

One would hope that enterprising young hackers (not crackers) are, at this moment, devising ways to defeat and regulate how and what this technology can automatically assimilate.

Seems the Copyright Commons should address this with a "dynamic linking" metadata tag that implements the shades of given rights into Photosynth's automatic assimilation protocol.

Guess the only safe bet is, if you don't want it stolen/snagged/incorporated, don't post it on the Net...

Sean, any way to protect the APUG galleries from this technology?

 

[argus]

Guess the only safe bet is, if you don't want it stolen/snagged/incorporated, don't post it on the Net...

Correct.

Apart from that, it looks like an amazing piece of software!

Greetings,
G

 

[Tom Kershaw]

I've just looked at the video, very disturbing. Have the developers acknowledged the implications...?. Not in the video.

Tom.

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

It reminds me of the Eco or Borges story about people doing a 1:1 map of reality. Forget "virtual reality" that was a buzzword of the 90s. Now, we're in the process of doing a fine-grained copy of reality.

 

[bjorke]

I have seen this for a while, our work execs were quite excited.

I find it dull. New ways to use technology to make things less meaningful and duller.

Seadragon:
"arrange them any way we want" == "any way the software wants" -- NOT "any way you want"

Photosynth:
"greater than the sum of the parts" == "homogenized real estate photos" -- let's be sure to remove all people, story, meaning, interpretation, age, flavor, charm. Images are not pictures, they're just data for [our] dataset.

Linked by tags -- what if the tag was: happiness instead of Ile de la Cite? Gee, the software returned an ERROR!

 

[keeds]

I know there are lots of implications, copyright, selected views of things, etc, etc, but holy crap! What a piece of software. Mind you another typical piece of innovation from microsoft. Some one else builds it, they buy it...

 

[Sean]

Sean, any way to protect the APUG galleries from this technology?

It would be pretty difficult for this system to use our gallery images because the gallery is closed to subscribers. They would have to register and subscribe a bot to get in and rip the data..

 

[Sean]

One potential issue I see is that if information is condensed in such a small area will there ever be times you were expected to zoom into section 3, subsection 2 of 3, then to subsection 5 of 3 to read some fine print.. "sorry sir we don't cover that anymore, it was in the synthmodule that you read and agreed to it's terms" huh? I didn't see it.. "well, you must not have zoomed in enough sir"..

 

[Sean]

Images are not pictures, they're just data for [our] dataset.

 

[jstraw]

I think it's wonderful.

 

[haris]

Error: 404 File Not Found is what I get when clicket at link...

 

[roteague]

Error: 404 File Not Found is what I get when clicket at link...

That is because the link is improperly formed - take the "http://" from the beginning of the the string (there are two of these, and should only be one).

 

[dslater]

Here is something to put in your philosophical pipe and smoke:

Dead Link Removed

The potential issues of privacy, copyright and data persistence this software raises are staggering.

I don't really see this - Photosynth itself just allows you to put the photos together - it's the collecting of images from the internet that cause privacy and copyright issues and that can already be done with or without Photosynth.

Dan

 

[Kino]

I don't really see this - Photosynth itself just allows you to put the photos together - it's the collecting of images from the internet that cause privacy and copyright issues and that can already be done with or without Photosynth.

Dan

Yeah, I should have been more specific and said something to the effect of : " Loosed on the Internet with sufficient resources and without oversight, the software makes it very easy to abuse privacy and copyright".

As a relational database or such, it could be quite fantastic, but I tend to think of potential abuses first. I dunnot, it might have something to do with our times or the current political situation in the USA.... eh?