Belated topic time: Few months ago, I changed copyright on this blogsite and my Flickr from a Creative Commons non-commercial variant to All Rights Reserved. I did this in response to so-called artificial intelligence algorithms scraping content from websites for various purposes—improving learning models being one of them.
Some of that content can and likely will be repurposed for profit and in manner outside my artistic control. Software developers, many of them large tech companies—think Apple, Google, and Microsoft, for starters—can claim plausible deniability. “Hey, we didn’t know that would happen”.
All Rights Reserved is in the larger scheme more like a picket fence and no trespassing sign before an approaching bulldozer. But the warning establishes ownership boundaries that could be legally meaningful in the wake of future damages. May there be none.
In that vain, we present the Featured Image, which I captured today using Leica Q2 Monochom. The camera offers manual focus and Macro mode, both of which are activated by rings around the lens barrel; I used them to make this moment. Vitals: f/5.6, ISO 200, 1/160 sec, 28mm; 11:06 a.m. PST.
The spider’s web, like the World Wide Web, is crisscrossed and intricate. In the photo, your eyes don’t know where to go. Something similar could be asserted about finding your way around the Internet. Will AI make navigation easer or lead to dead ends and misdirection? Time will tell.