“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery-celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from-it’s where you take them to.”

-Jim Jarmusch

There’s a big debate going on today regarding the latest music video by Director Keith Schofield (above), Charlotte Gainsbourg’s “Heaven Can Wait” (featuring Beck). The video would seem to clearly rip off and steal ideas from amateur photographers including Flickr user William Hundley. The video above, for instance, features a skateboard sitting on four cheeseburgers, looking almost identical to a similar popular photograph which had been published previously by Hundley on Flickr.

Hundley’s posted about this apparent rip off in his flickrstream in a post entitled Someone is using my ideas… Hundley was tipped off to this rip off by Merkely who also tipped me off to it.

I’m not a lawyer and personally don’t know enough about copyright law to know if Schofield has any legal liability over this theft or not. The image is not the same, clearly, but it would be inconceivable to me that Schofield could have thought up the idea without first viewing Hundley’s original photograph. But is idea appropriation an actual crime? Is there technically any liability? I have no idea, but it’s an interesting debate and maybe someone who knows the law better than I do could chime in.

If you are in the market for a compact digital camera check out this review by Flickr user Andertho. He highly recommends the Olympus E-P1.

Retro beauty, modern function. This is the sweetest, nicest, awesomest, prettiest digital camera I have ever seen. The form factor is amazing. The build quality is just superb. The fit and finish are masterfully done. The camera has a satisfying heft even given its small size. The shutter makes a nice, quiet ka-chunk noise that is just satisfying as well. This thing looks like something Henri Cartier-Bresson would have carried around 60 years ago, yet it is an amazingly capable modern camera. This is a camera you just want to pick up and hold and play with. I find excuses to take this thing with me and use it. I love my D-300 for what it can DO. I love this camera for what it IS.

Read the entire review here.

Thanks to Ryan MacLean for the heads up.

Adobe today announced the Photoshop Camera Raw 5.6, Lightroom 2.6 and DNG Converter 5.6 Release Candidates, available for immediate download on Adobe Labs. The term ‘release candidate’ means this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing to provide the highest quality experience for customers working on a variety of hardware and software configurations.

The Lightroom 2.6 Release Candidate is available as a free download for existing Lightroom 2 customers, and the Photoshop Camera Raw 5.6 Release Candidate is available as a free download for existing customers of Photoshop CS4. The DNG Converter 5.6 Release Candidate is also available as a free download for all customers. Click here for more information and to test out the updates.

Over at the Photobox blog they are complaining today after Flickr has apparently cut off their commercial API access. Photobox is a commercial photo printer in the UK who had previously been able to use the Flickr API to help Flickr users print photos with them.

From the Photobox blog:

“At PhotoBox we passionately believe in the values of the open web and consumer choice; if you do as well then please join us in our mini effort to encourage the mighty ‘community driven’ flickr to play fair. So put your hands in the air by signing this petition and who knows, just maybe, the very smart folks at flickr HQ in sunny CA will stop, take note and reconsider their decision to cut off our full API access. We believe it’s entirely their choice to have a preferential online prints partner in the UK and Europe all over (y)our photostreams (or not!) but to exclusively cut us off ‘due to these contractual obligations’ is a harsh step too far and flies in the face of what we all want – an open and social web driven by consumer choice. “

At the same time Flickr has been busy pushing hard their printing relationship with Snapfish. In addition to adding a shopping cart at the top of 100% of the pages on flickr linking to printing by Snapfish, Flickr has also now added a colorized yellow “print photos” button that is above your photos on your photo page. The previous button was there but not colorized to stand out. They have also changed the former “organize” feature to now read “organize & create” pushing printing services with Snapfish in the Flickr photo organizer with a new “print & create tab.”

Personally I’m not crazy about the new promotion. When I signed up for a Flickr Pro account I was promised “ad-free” browsing and sharing. Although adding a shopping cart to the top of every single one of my pages may not be the biggest deal, it does make flickr feel a little bit less like a paid photo sharing community and a little bit more like amazon.com. But whatever the case, it is in fact advertising and personally I have no interest in printing up my photos with Snapfish. At a minimum, Flickr should give paid Pro accounts an opportunity to dismiss the advert shopping cart and other printing marketing like they give you the opportunity to mute the McDonald’s/Ford/Kodak/Starbucks etc. adverts that now show up on the groups page. The deal for paid accounts was no adverts and Flickr should keep their end of that bargain.

Like recently adding the Yahoo! logo bug to the top of every flickr page, it looks as though Flickr is increasingly taking steps to move towards commercializing Flickr to their Pro account users. While Flickr/Yahoo are a business and I don’t begrudge them making money any way they can, I think that paid Pro accounts should in fact remain advert free — and that if Flickr is going to continue marketing this way to Pro accounts that they probably ought to stop with the false advertising claim of an “ad-free” browsing experience for paid Pro accounts.