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Good suggestion :-)

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} imagelogr [NC,OR]
RewriteRule (.*)$ http://corbis.com/ [R,L]

If they think I previously stole the images they are stealing, they're not responsible, right?

Wow. Cell towers every 1/4 mile. That will be attractive. Might look something like this:
http://pro.corbis.com/images/IH172885.jpg?size=67&uid=77B92ED2-843B-4F46-9484-2496E45AE139 http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2071/1943018955_52100c0f4d.jpg

Why would we want our modern 2000-era cityscape to look like something from the late 1800s cityscape?

Frankly, I don't see the difference here to somebody selling a stock photo of one of Taser's products, for example. What Corbis are selling in that link has no significant differences that I can see from what Linden are selling. Except that Corbis's looks better, while Linden's is more useful because you can view it from any angle.

Yes, and depending on how you use that picture, you could be infringing the trademark. If you use it for educational purposes, as you have here, you're fine. If you use it along with a news article, you're fine. If you use it as marketing materials for selling your taser-knock off... then you're engaging in unfair competition and trademark infringement. It's your use that's the issue, not the mere fact that Corbis sells a picture. Trademark infringement isn't about using the mark itself - I could put up a website with lots of pictures of Tasers and I'd have no problem. It's when you start using the trademark to take advantage of the association in a consumer's mind between taser and Taser International to redirect that to taser and Knockoff Co. in Second Life. That's infringement.

Trademark scope is narrowly defined and may not be recognised in a virtual world...

Forget for a moment the entire virtual world aspect of this, as its legal ramifications are (at present) totally unknown.

Ignoring that, what we have is a company (Linden Labs) selling data which when loaded into software that runs on client PCs causes that screen to display an image of something that looks like one of Taser's products. When selling this data, they are explicitly stating that it is modelled on one of Taser's products.

Frankly, I don't see the difference here to somebody selling a stock photo of one of Taser's products, for example. What Corbis are selling in that link has no significant differences that I can see from what Linden are selling. Except that Corbis's looks better, while Linden's is more useful because you can view it from any angle.

Does it run Linux?

This one does.

What educational value beyond the current educational technology (e.g. books and mentoring) does VR actually give you? And keep in mind it has not only provide some value, but a value that offsets the increased cost of the VR environment to begin with? Wouldn't in the past 20 years we'd actually see these immersive VR environments in at least some form? The only thing close has been flight simulators, and they've been around for at least 60 years.

Games? Tried that. No body wanted to purchase the hardware when a home console was almost just as good.

TC Phone 1:

1) Start talking

If this were true then it would be illegal to take a photograph in a public place in France with any people in it. Just considering professional photographers alone, that makes thousands of offenders a year.

There are over 5000 infringing photographs of people in France on Corbis if you search for 'crowd france'.

http://www.corbis.com/

The graphical artist (probably out of laziness) made some design decisions that area clearly inspired by the Apple logo.

Right, nobody but apple ever did that.

Ah! Rights discovered: one two three four.

Ah! Rights discovered: one two three four.

Ah! Rights discovered: one two three four.

Ah! Rights discovered: one two three four.

Corbis was founded by Bill Gates in 1989 and archives over 25 million images in a secured - climate controlled - limestone mine in Pennsylvania.

There are few institutions outside the great national museums that have the resources to do this sort of thing.

The odds are very good that the source of any historically significant, instantly recognizable, image in print will be in the Corbis collections. The Bettmann Archieve

In addition, I believe Microsoft owns Corbis, which has been quietly buying up most great photos. They are primed to be the leading supplier of photos to print and web industry. Granted, there are other players, but as Microsoft rises into professional desktop publishing, with professional software (they'll probably buy Quark or something), they are going to want their standards with DRM in place so they can charge for fonts, photos, media, everything. It's all part of the pay per use model. Imagine, rather than buying Quark for $2K, stock art for hundreds of dollars, a computer system, etc. you can just rent it for a set price, based on the number of copies you want to distribute. Or pay based on web impressions. That way you only have to invest based on the success you actually get and you're not limited by investment capital (bootstrapping). It's pretty brilliant, and I have always said that Microsoft is not just the largest software company; they are the largest publishing company in the world.

By controlling media from top to bottom, from the creation (input) to the viewer (output), nipping pennies off each time, they stand to make a shitload of money while at the same time making it easier and cheaper for providers to create, and lower the risk and initial investment dollars in return for taking some of the inevitable rewards.

Interesting concept, I hope it goes somewhere. Too bad the emphasis will not initially be on quality--I'm sure like everything microsoft does it will be a basic model that evolves with patches over time.

Bill Gates has a hobby business on the side, by the way. It consists of buying up the rights to all the best pictures in the world.

The Bridgeman decision is based on the famous Feist vs. Rural Telephone case. This Supreme Court decision that phone directories are not original enough to be copyrighted created the third-party phone book industry. When the Internet came along, the Feist decision permitted a whole range of directory-type services. As the Court put it, "The originality requirement is constitutionally mandated for all works.", and "No one may claim originality as to facts." This last is why databases of facts are not copyrightable in the US.

Corbis has a clever, but legally questionable, scheme for claiming copyright on public domain images. They add digital rights management information to the image, and then copyright the DRM information. They then claim that copying the DRM information violates their copyright, and removing it violates the DMCA. That's very similar to the argument Lexmark made in Lexmark vs. Static Control, and it didn't work there: "Generally speaking, "lock-out" codes fall on the functional-idea rather than the original-expression side of the copyright line." and "Similarly, a computer program may be protectable in the abstract but not generally entitled to protection when used necessarily as a lock-out device."

The galleries in question probably pay for dominance

That's what I think however I didn't see results from Corbis.com (BillG's stock photo company) in any results of searches that I did. And I did search for pretty generic stuff (ie: "ansel adams" who, I believe, Corbis owns the rights to)

For an example of visual search see LTU Technologies product Image Seeker. They have a demo using the 65,000 corbis royalty free images.

Image-seeker is highly scalable server-side software.

For an example of visual search see LTU Technologies product Image Seeker. They have a demo using the 65,000 corbis royalty free images.

Image-seeker is highly scalable server-side software.

Perhaps the photo looks good because it's owned by Corbis and was scanned from the original negatives?

Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft, reclines on his desk in his office soon after the release of Windows 1.0. 1985 Bellevue, Washington, USA

And, here is the original image in Corbis.

So, as always, Slashdot is wrong. It is from 1985, not 1983. But, amazingly enough, it actually is Bill Gates, and it is real.

Well, when MS needs stock art, Bill Gates /does/ own a very well known stock image library.

I thought it was very odd when Corbis had a contest offering a brand new dual G5 with a huge cinema display every day for a month.

There's also an article about myostatin in this month's Scientific American, which includes an even more striking photo of a Belgian Blue. Here's the original from Corbis (which belongs to Bill Gates... ugh).

this

From the overview page at Corbis.

Founded by Bill Gates in 1989, Corbis is headquartered in Seattle, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Tokyo.

Just throwing out that tidbit of info for the tin foil hat crowd. ;)

Corbis's own page about itself admits that Bill Gates founded the company.

It's somewhat relavant here on Slashdot... that a Gates-owned company is trying to bring down the hammer on somebody who tried damage a democrat with a lie.

Moral of the story... faked photographs are art, but using a faked photograph as proof for an event that never really happened is a big no-no.

I'd never heard of this, but what is it with this guy and EULAs?
The Use of this site from the front page:

Bill Gates has a private project (Corbis, not affiliated with MS) growing to amass a large collection of photographs. It already does a good business of finding and licensing photos for almost any use. They could be trying to get more for the collection, or to join up in an IP pipeline to benefit both companies.

>Their Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten

Then you have to forget the price really quickly, because if I were to drive a Caddy (or a BMW) I'd be reminded about their cost weekly at the gas pump. Weekly? With an MPG of 16, more like almost daily.

Hmmm. This and this or that and that. This or that. What do I afford? What does one do?

Personally, I'm into having money to spend and just adding in a seat cover. Also, I like a good steak dinner better than wild acceleration.

Either way, whether you own a BMW or a Lada Samara, you will get from home to work within seconds of each other.

It all depends on what you place more value on: Looking good, or enjoying life.

Remember, Bill Gates owns a large part of Corbis. One of the largest photo licensing firms out there.

FORWARD

Yes, and around the same time he was buying up the digital rights to huge amounts of fine and commerical art. I thought Corbis was owned by Microsoft but apparently it's something he did on the side. I think it started by buying up an existing image supply company or two. Yahoo! Finance link

"Founded by Bill Gates in 1989, Corbis is headquartered in Seattle, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Tokyo."

Hasn't Bill Gates been busy buying up the rights to electronically reproduce works of art through his company Corbis?

In Japan child erotica was legal all the way until 1999.

Under Canadian child pornography laws, written discussions of "sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years" are considered child pornography (Criminal Code section 163.1).

In the United States vs. Knox case American court held that there is no nudity requirement in the child pornography statute and considered music videos of dancing 10-17 years old girls wearing bikinis and leotards to be child pornography, because the photographer zoomed on the girl's pubic areas for extended periods of time (United States vs. Knox).

Many American states also prohibit images of minors displaying their bodies "for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer." Some legal specialists are concerned that legal images can be considered child pornography simply by being presented in the context of the porn website.

UK laws consider artificially created images (which only appear to be photographs) to be considered child porn, regardless of their origins.

As for the motives, they are the same as with traditional vanilla porn. People need to jerk off and some enjoy doing that while watching images of naked kids or kids having sex. Aside from the issue of child porn creation, there is nothing wrong with that. And as for the creation, you need to realise that most of the child porn is created in countries with very bad socio-economic situations. Kids there have a very simple choice - earn some money for themselves and their families or starve. It just happens that there is no "safety net" and no jobs, other than prostitution or child porn. What would you like them to do? I say having sex with an adult for money is still better than starving to death. What do you think? It's the same as with Nike sweatshops - it's terrible that kids work there for 10 hours daily for a few dollars a day, but the alternative is no job at all.

HTH.

Isn't this graphical search close to what would be in the domain of Corbis?

And isn't Corbis the oft-critisized Bill Gates' project to buy photographs and sell licenses for them?

I have to credit Bill Gates with two things, first, good or bad, he's a shrewd business man, second, unless he's crazy, he's doing his job because he enjoys it.

There's been a spate of news stories covering the topic, perhaps the most prominent in the WSJ of Friday, 27 June, "'Junk Science' Ban Also Keeps Jurors From Sound Evidence" (regrettably not freely available online)

Our good friends at Corbis have scanned in this article for us! There is also a good article at Tech Centeral Station.

"it'll never work!" Rocky

Getty is one of Bill's acquisitions too.

Here and here.

Here and here.

It's pathetic, but Corbis actually sells extremely low rez 640x480 images to "suckers."

I would argue that anything less than a print quality TGA image is a sample image, analogous to 128kbps MP3. i.e. it's free publicity in the eyes of real artists, and it's "copyright infringment" to greedy middlemen.

e.g. I happen to have a tangible print of this Pat Rawlings painting on my wall......and this is called free advertising.

Anway... Everyone benefits from abundance...except the selfish FEW that would like to profit from artificial scarcity.

It's pathetic, but Corbis actually sells extremely low rez 640x480 images to "suckers."

I would argue that anything less than a print quality TGA image is a sample image, analogous to 128kbps MP3. i.e. it's free publicity in the eyes of real artists, and it's "copyright infringment" to greedy middlemen.

e.g. I happen to have a tangible print of this Pat Rawlings painting on my wall......and this is called free advertising.

Anway... Everyone benefits from abundance...except the selfish FEW that would like to profit from artificial scarcity.

I believe that was supposed to be a stab at Corbis, which Gates owns.

Well CreativePro.com didn't work for me either, but fontsearch did.

However the images or fonts returned by those sites are not free, you have to purchase the files. Those 2 sites are really a bunch of crap, for commercial images, use Corbis or Associated Press instead !

AltaVista

Corbis

Ditto.com

Lycos

Photos To Go

Diggit!

Defending Bill Gates on /. does seem foolish, but I have some spare karma. here goes

Bill bought the Codex Leicester from noted ego-maniac and proven liar Armand Hammer. Dr. Hammer had renamed the book "Codex Hammer" and not allowed public viewing.

Since acquisition, Bill has loaned it out for public display and now keeps in a museum in Seattle.

Yes, Bill, through his solely ownded Corbis, did buy the Betteman Archive and Corbis does charge for access.

BUT, the Archive was in private hands, was (literally) falling apart, was in a building the NY Times deems a "fire risk," (on old warehouse), and only a teeny portion of it was digitized.

Corbis has given the archive a proper physical home and moved much of the archive online. No one else was willing and able to invest these kinds of millions

Bill is stil an evil, rotten bastard -- even Nero did some good public works

I have not yet browsed their entire ftp site, but it seems to have some images available. Some are even fairly high-res (>10MB TIFFs). However, they aren't all that interesting. Take this for example. Just a guy playing golf.

Anyway, not ALL of their stuff is available for a price. Some of it can even be downloaded by an anonymous coward for free.


kickin' science like no one else can,
my dick is twice as long as my attention span.

The Betteman Archives was a collection of Photographs (and drawings?) that was availible online for free. Way back when... I used to grab free pic's of famous people off of thier site. A perfect example was Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Teran. A rather famous photograph.

Corbis now owns the rights and these pics can only be had for a price. Corbis is owned by Bill Gates.

THIS is probably the #1 reason I dislike the man.

When I need an image for my own "devious projects," I usually start with Corbis Images. It has a huge selection and the samples are frequently good enough for my purposes. I use Photoshop to remove the Corbis mark and have what I need. Of course, this is only good for purposes where violating copyright isn't an issue, such as making a joke image to email to a friend, creating a mockup web page to show to a client, etc. I wouldn't recommend doing this for something that would get noticed.