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Hi all, (I think Bill Gates may transcend our holy status!)
Excuse dupes in cross posting.
To pick up onthe Corbis line in " Wired" NOV 1996. ( I've been watching a
special here in Australia about the growth of the computer industry called
" The Nerds", Bill Gates, Apple, etc.). I wonder where Bill Gates fits
education into his big picture? Has anyone written to CORBIS and found out?
I emailed them once but got no reply, when they announced something on the
list about a year ago. I can see that this could work out for us ( how
naive!!!). Buy digital scans ( they'll have to be cheap), and have them
sitting on our local server, ,... but the artists involved and CORBIS would
have to have a benevolent attitude to education. I'll write to them snail
mail. Has anyone else been in this direction before me? Anyone know what it
costs?
I found recently when I bought slides from Australian artists direct,( and
am now buying some digital direct) that they were interested in exposure in
a teriary setting, and did not see our visual library as a money tree.
However to be fair to them, perhaps we could have software that makes
students pay for a download of their images, the same as they would pay for
a photocopy. Excuse my ignorance but is there such a software? In that
case this would contribute towards any licensing fees demanded perhaps by
Corbis and others?
The article is indeed interesting. I'll paraphrase or summarise what I
understood from this article. Bill Gates " content company" definitely has
a 10 year profit plan projection, and in my opinion, the aim is to capture
the digital content market as it transcends Analog? I suppose with the new
Castanet project by Acrobat ( or Microsoft version which doesn't grapple
with HTML at all), this could be happening soon!
See the WWW site at:
http://www.corbis.com
* non boolean based searching ( natural language)
* Delivery of 35 Mbyte ( average size) on custom-cut CD-ROMs, due to
shorage of bandwidth and the length of time it takes to download; (
Watermarks are affixed to online images and cannot be blown up without
blurring.).
* delivery by LAN or WAN or cable modem or satellite dish..
* eventual diversity to suit futuristic digital formats. " CD-ROMs will not
be long-lived at Corbis".
* adding 40,000 images per month with 6 Scitex scanners ( worth 1/2 million
each).
* Has rights to works ( many non-exclusive as I understand) from Ansel
Adams, Galen Rowell, etc., Library of Congress, rare civil war photos (
Medford Historical Society: Oregon), Pach Brothers, Saint Petersburg's
State Hermitage Museum, National Gallery of London, Royla Ontario Museum,
Detroit Institute of Art, Japan's Sakamoto, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 16
million item Bettman Archive.
* CD-ROM titles - "A Passion for Art" ( little viewed Barnes Collecton of
Impressionist Painting), Critical Mass, ( Multimedia history fo the
buildingof th atomic bomb), " Volcanoes", " Cezanne";
Scheduled releases:"FDR" (37th American President)
"Leonardo" - based on da Vinci notebooks bought by Gates(
one for 30.8 million).
Interested to hear different views, opinions?
Jennifer QCA
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>in the latest issue of *Wired*,
>November 1996, p.172+ is an interesting
>(sobering) article about the development
>of the Corbis digital image archive and the
>direction this Bill Gates company is going.
>
>Merrill Smith
>Rotch Library/MIT
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"As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.
When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular."
Oscar Wilde " The Critic as Artist. Pt ii."
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