Hi(gh)!



> So then I have to delete my private p.b.i download collection
> accumulated since 2000?

Obviously not, at least as long as I run my computer in Germany - our 
copyright law includes the right of private copy, i. e. copies that are 
not used in a professional setting (and, of course, also not re-published).

But originally, I did not start this thread to discuss copyright, but 
rather to ask whether there is interest among the POV-Ray community in a 
precise, accurate database representation of the works accumulated on 
p.b.i during the last 15 years!

Such a database, also containing information about used POV-Ray features 
and techniques and as many scene scripts as available, also would serve 
didactical purposes for all POV-Ray beginners and not-yet-experts!

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

Post a reply to this message

Hi(gh)!

On 18.04.2013 13:19, Urs Holzer wrote:

> In which country? After all, I have been citing papers in my master
> thesis by indicating the name of the journal, the author and the title.
> This can hardly conflict with any sane law.
>
> As a rule of thumb, you can assume that metadata is not protected by
> copyright. But I am not an american lawyer, just a swiss citizen. Where
> is the server of news.povray.org located again?

The problem I thought of was not of simply citing a title already given, 
but rather to assign a new, more "speaking" title - many contributions 
on p.b.i came with no explicit title at all...

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:53:59 +0100, scott wrote:

>> Posters have often given explicit permission to use images as
>> wallpapers, for example, but this would seem to fall under Fair Use or
>> Fair Dealing in many countries, anyway.
> 
> I don't think such explicit permission would be necessary,

Probably not, though IANAL, it seems that such use would be fair use, 
unless it were used to make money.

This is something that I ran into occasionally when teaching new 
instructors how to do presentations.  It's not acceptable, for example, 
to use a Dilbert cartoon in a public presentation without explicit 
permission to do so.  Not because Scott Adams is a jerk, but because that 
would constitute a commercial use (especially in a class that's paid 
attendance) and might even be seen as an endorsement of the class, 
depending on how it's used.

But as a wallpaper, or printed out and hanging on an office cubicle 
wall?  That'd be difficult to make a case for, I think.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jörg 'Yadgar' Bleimann wrote:
> The problem I thought of was not of simply citing a title already
> given, but rather to assign a new, more "speaking" title - many
> contributions on p.b.i came with no explicit title at all...

That's absolutely no problem at all. Think about book reviews that give 
additional information about the book's content. As long as you don't 
modify the post itself, you may call it anything you want.

Instead of focusing on copyright, it makes also sense to discuss what 
people posting in p.b.i whould actually be happy with. This might lead 
to more restrictions than copyright. But enough with that for now.

Post a reply to this message

Hi

Jörg 'Yadgar' Bleimann wrote:
> Currently I'm trying to convince a friend of POV-Ray's outstanding
> landscape rendering capabilities by sending him examples from my
> private p.b.i image collection. While browsing through these currently
> about 18,500 images stored on my harddisk since September 2000 when I
> first hit p.b.i, I started to think whether it would be reasonable to
> have all these images stored in a publicly accessible database on
> povray.org... images would be categorized by artist, publication date,
> graphic format, size, total number of pixels, x-y ratio, number of
> colours, color distribution and, mostly important a wide range of
> (possibly hierarchically organized) keywords describing image contents
> and used POV-Ray features and techniques. The images also would be
> logically connected to their scene scripts, as far as available.
> 
> What do you think about such an idea?

First of all, doing something like this is a huge amount of work never 
to be underestimated. I find the idea intriguing and I like to share a 
few ideas of my own regarding this.

Let me first extract some keywords from your post:
* publicly accessible database
* lots of metadata for every image/post
  - extractable from the images: 
    size, ratio, color distribution
  - extractable from the post:
    author, title
  - extractable from scene files:
    used features, POV-Ray version
  - not easily extractable:
    topics, keywords for objects shown in the image
* Connecting images to scene files (linking p.b.i posts to p.b.s-f 
  posts)

I would recommend the following strategy: Intertwine the metadata with 
the semantic web. This gives us a plethora of keywords. For example, 
look at DBPedia. It provides identifiers for everything described by an 
article on Wikipedia. Yes, POV-Ray too: 
http://dbpedia.org/resource/POV-Ray
For Flickr there is already such a database: If you follow this link, 
you will see that there is a photo collection at flickr:
http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/flickrwrappr/photos/POV-Ray
I imagine something similar for p.b.i. Every image could be linked with 
appropriate keywords from DBPedia (or other public databases).
Also, they could be linked with descriptions of their authors (name, 
website and so on).

To get back to the points above:
* Integrating the database into the semantic web allows people to make 
arbitrary queries and to combine it with other databases. This is what I 
call "publicly accessible".
* The semantic web has vocabularies for many things: describing images 
(size and so on), indicating the author and title of something, 
capturing metdata of newsgroupsposts, hierarchical keywords for every-
day objects and topics.
* Since the semantic web is all about linking stuff together, linking 
images to newsgroup posts and scene files comes naturally.

Clear drawback: The semantic web is kind of new territory while the 
usual relational database with a web interface is robust and proven.

More about the semantic web: http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/
Especially important is the part about "Linked Data":
http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/data
The integration of flickr metadata into the semantic web is described 
here:
http://wifo5-03.informatik.uni-mannheim.de/flickrwrappr/

Greetings
Urs

Post a reply to this message

Hi(gh)!

On 19.04.2013 00:04, Urs Holzer wrote:

> First of all, doing something like this is a huge amount of work never
> to be underestimated.

Yes, we speak of currently about 18,500 image files...

> I find the idea intriguing and I like to share a
> few ideas of my own regarding this.
>
> Let me first extract some keywords from your post:
> * publicly accessible database
> * lots of metadata for every image/post
>    - extractable from the images:
>      size, ratio, color distribution

I'm working on a small C program running on the console which will be 
able to do this - at least after having the image file converted to 
uncompressed TGA!

>    - extractable from scene files:
>      used features, POV-Ray version

...or, if no scripts are available, probably from the POVer's posting on 
p.b.i!

>    - not easily extractable:
>      topics, keywords for objects shown in the image
> * Connecting images to scene files (linking p.b.i posts to p.b.s-f
>    posts)
>
> I would recommend the following strategy: Intertwine the metadata with
> the semantic web. This gives us a plethora of keywords. For example,
> look at DBPedia. It provides identifiers for everything described by an
> article on Wikipedia. Yes, POV-Ray too:
> http://dbpedia.org/resource/POV-Ray

I looked it up... appears both vague and complicated to me! And as you 
say it was still in an experimental stage, I think a relational keyword 
table (or better, several tables making up a whole keyword hierarchy) 
would be far more reliable.

> Clear drawback: The semantic web is kind of new territory while the
> usual relational database with a web interface is robust and proven.

I think so!

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

Post a reply to this message