9 ms·

Kodak’s Dubious Blockchain Gamble

162 points by IntronExon 9y ago

Relys 9y ago
“I would not be sleeping very well if I was involved in this,” said Jill Carlson, a blockchain consultant.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  Blockchain consultant sounds like a fun job, though probably the only advice I'd be able to give as one would be that same quote over and over.
  - paulie_a 9y ago
    That sounds like the modern day equivalent of traveling sales men pitching cure all tonics and other scams
  - pyromine 9y ago
    My roommate does PR consulting in the cyrpto space, I've never heard more bullshit come out of one person's mouth. Seems like 3 months after each project he's talking about how bs that on was, but this new project is super legit.
stickfigure 9y ago
Also covered by Matt Levine in today's Money Stuff, with his trademark hilarity: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-30/iss-tells-investors-how-they-want-to-vote https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-30/iss-tells... (search down for 'Kodak') It's sad how far the brand has fallen.
- jpatokal 9y ago
  This pretty much sums it up: The point is to build new decentralized protocols that will not be owned by any one central company, but will instead be the property of all of their users, who will fund their development by buying coins and who will then be rewarded by the increasing value and usefulness of those coins. This is not that. This is more like: WENN Digital will manage a centralized database of photo rights, and someone will stand off to the side shouting "blockchain!" occasionally when it seems like people's attention is drifting. Also, that chart in the NYT with all the Kodak-colored little boxes and arrows is buzzword comedy gold. Blockchain leads to Tensorflow because why not!
  - paganel 9y ago
    The first part about institutional investors deciding which company gets to be part of a market index and which not (thus defeating the purpose of “index following”) is also very interesting. But for now everyone is happy that the “tide is lifting all boats”, that the “fundamentals are healthy” and all that, even though to me it looks sketchy as hell and reminds me of how the rating agencies were doctoring their ratings pre-2008, for “the good of their clients”.
programmarchy 9y ago
Putting proof of ownership of a photo on the blockchain is an interesting idea, but I don't understand the economics. Artists pay Kodak to register their image with the blockchain, and Kodak has a mechanism to crawl the web to find images violating this blockchain registration. Okay, great, but why would anyone want to mine their blockchain?
- dev_throw 9y ago
  The incentive would be to get tokens that they in theory could exchange for money on exchanges. The token's value would be determined by the free market, or by the incentives they talk about in the article: > "...such as a share of KodakOne’s revenue and access to a “marketplace” that will allow them to spend their KodakCoins on camera equipment, studios for photo shoots, and travel expenses."
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    Yeah, but that has nothing to do with the service they're offering. It's a service with random blockchain stuff grafted on. If you want to use tokens as store of value or medium of exchange, go use something like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.
    - k__ 9y ago
      Seems to me like some people can't understand the difference between tokens and blockchains. But maybe they do and thought "Well, a blockchain is a good idea to track photo ownership AND people make mad bucks with crypto currencies at the moment, we can offer a something that has to do with photos and make big money on the side"
      - CydeWeys 9y ago
        Is there truly a meaningful difference between tokens and blockchains though? Sure, the token is running one level up in the architecture hierarchy, using a blockchain or maybe even another token as its settlement layer, but from a user's perspective it doesn't act any differently. It's kind of like how, as a user, I don't know or care whether the HN webserver my browser is talking to right now is running in a VM or on bare metal. The actual use properties of tokens/coins/blockchains aren't any different.
TaylorGood 9y ago
The real gamble was Kodak offering their namesake in a token project for "no direct revenue from the public offering... receive a minority stake in WENN Digital, 3 percent of all KodakCoins issued and a royalty on future revenue." Minority ownership in a random company owned by a former fraudster and 3% of the tokens with their own name on it? So many things wrong with this. Where is the secret deal that made this happen? Did the Kodak CEO get 40% of the tokens in his personal wallet? For a multi-decade, legacy brand to entrust that guy with their future is rather bizarre. If this fails, it is quite possibly the last nail for Kodak..
- empath75 9y ago
  Kodak is a zombie.
  - syntheticnature 9y ago
    As someone who grew up in the shadow of what once was the "Big Yellow Box" I cannot emphasize this enough -- Kodak has very little still going for it and has shrunk greatly. At this point it's probably worth the gamble to them, as that's how dire things are.
  - TylerE 9y ago
    To give a few numbers... At their peak in 1988 they employed 188,000 people, with over 60,000 of those in the Rochester, NY area. Today they employ fewer than 6,000, with only about 1300 in Rochester.
    - boznz 9y ago
      6,000.. Wow! I seriously assumed just a couple of administrators
  - matt_s 9y ago
    Kodak is just a brand that they essentially lease out. The various CEO's all shed any businesses that resembled something profitable in attempts to, well I don't know, help shareholders. Another imaging company where Kodak has its HQ is going through a similar but slower downturn. You could say they are ... copying them (sorry). I think when a lot of the baby boomers finally retire from the workforce, office printing will drop off a cliff as far as usage goes.
mv4 9y ago
I wish Kodak had started with a clean slate, instead of recycling WENN Digital's failed coin attempt: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1515139/000149315218000017/form8-k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1515139/000149315218... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/kodak-apparently-re-branded-a-paparazzi-licensing-platform-as-kodak-coin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/kodak-apparently...
- mannykannot 9y ago
  I get the impression that WENN pitched the idea to Kodak, which has been looking for straws to grasp for quite a while.
pwaai 9y ago
fuck...I just loaded up on KODK March put options.... if I don't post on HN for a while....you know why
- nwsm 9y ago
  you bought KODK options and didn't know about this?
  - mikestew 9y ago
    Parent said puts, and (assuming they bought puts) that means they think the price will down. Which is why I’m confused by the post: you won’t be posting on HN because...you’ll be busy rolling in a bathtub of money in March? If parent sold puts, well, maybe they should stick to S&P index funds.
Apocryphon 9y ago
As a potentially marketable concept (if not necessarily an actually useful product), blockchain for visual data might not be such a bad idea. With the recent advent of AI-modified videos such as deepfakes, blockchain validation has been brought up as a solution to prove the authenticity of videos. https://www.metafilter.com/172026/AI-Generated-Fake-Revenge-Porn-is-Becoming-Increasingly-Easy-to-Do#7302200 https://www.metafilter.com/172026/AI-Generated-Fake-Revenge-... Forget copyrights, market this as a way to address Fake News.
- tCfD 9y ago
  What's the long term value of paying for highly redundant, (yet highly gameable) custodial tracking of a piece of digital media when a dozen competing blockchains can be flooded by a hundred perfectly identical looking fakes made by altering a single bit in a single pixel, to generate a new hash and merkle root? Will enough people care that they don't have a signed original pepekitty by banksy when essentially perfect fake copies can still be made and distributed? Blockchain does nothing to solve this
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    I think you're missing my point. The original concept framed by Kodak was protecting IP, so that freelance photographers or whomever (likely large corporations) don't have their pictures re-used. But I'm saying that blockchain watermarking could have greater immediate appeal to the public when it's reputations and lives on the line. So journalism organizations and media corporations end up buying watermark protected hardware to ensure the veracity of content.
    - duskwuff 9y ago
      But what value does "blockchain" add here? What is so special about photo watermarking that makes a traditional database unsuitable to the purpose? If anything, the transaction rate limits of current blockchain technology seem like they'd be hugely limiting for this application...
gt_ 9y ago
While I’m not going out and buying any KodakCoin, this does sound like an excuse to load up on Tri-X 400.
- bradfa 9y ago
  Tri-X is sold by Kodak Alaris now, not Eastman Kodak, although I'm not sure who actually manufactures it: http://imaging.kodakalaris.com/professional-photographers/photographers/professional-films http://imaging.kodakalaris.com/professional-photographers/ph... Kodak Alaris and Eastman Kodak are separate companies. Disclosure: I'm employed by Kodak Alaris.
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    Is the new Ektachrome that's being released by Kodak being released by Kodak Alaris or Eastman Kodak?
    - bradfa 9y ago
      Ektachrome still photography film is a Kodak Alaris product. Kodak Alaris announced its return at CES in 2017: https://www.kodakalaris.com/en-gb/about/press-releases/2016/kodak-alaris-reintroduces-iconic-ektachrome-still-film https://www.kodakalaris.com/en-gb/about/press-releases/2016/... Eastman Kodak is also, as per that press release, going to bring Ektachrome movie film to market for their Super 8 camera.
  - gt_ 9y ago
    Interesting! Does Eastman Kodak only sell movie film?
    - bradfa 9y ago
      As far as I know, yes. Kodak Alaris sells all of the Kodak brand still photography film, paper, and chemicals, as well as selling/managing/running the Kodak Moments app/website and the Kodak photo kiosks (such as can be found at Target stores in the USA). I personally work in the Kodak Alaris division which makes Kodak branded (and now also Alaris branded) document scanners. EDIT: to clarify that it's still photography film that Kodak Alaris sells under the Kodak brand.
digi_owl 9y ago
I must admit, seeing this title gets me thinking about one of Cory Doctorow's books...
johnpowell 9y ago
I know this is probably not the best place for this. But I am a bit tipsy and want to type. I was janitor at KEZI (a ABC affiliate in Eugene Oregon) and gave up and went homeless for a bit. My sister got me a room with her friend for a few months while I found a job in Portland. I had to find a job. I had about 80 in cash so I had to cover job hunting and food with that. Not a easy task. So I stole a paper from a neighbor to look at the job listings. Great.. A temp listing and only a three miles away. So I can walk there. Fuck paying 2.50 for the bus.. That is two totinos. So I am waiting after filling out a application. They basically have you sit there all day and call you if "day labor" is needed. "Labor Ready" if I remember correctly. So I go out for some air and outside there is a weekly employment thing. I flip through and there is a promising ad. It is on 21st and Holgate near Reed College.. Way to far to walk. So fuck it.. I will risk the 2.50 to take the bus there and hope for the best. In my mind I was thinking job I will probably not get or 24 packets of ramen. The job was at Qualex. Basically Kodak. We did all the film possessing in Oregon. And yes.. I got hired. I worked in the digital room. Which was basically turning digital images upright and burning CD's. Processing thousands of images a shift. Calling the police when we hit kiddie porn, processing the images from murder scenes. The cops used us. So many suicide photos. They did not prepare us for this. Yes, suicide with a shotgun is possible. That was my Monday. I was fired because of 9/11. I went to work on 9/11 and there was a note on the time machine spouting shit about "respect" and "mourning" and that we didn't need to come in. Which is bullshit. We didn't need to come in since nobody wanted film developed that day. And a call letting me know before I spent 90 minutes on the bus would have been fab. So the next day it was all cool and during lunch I bitched. Shocker. After I said they didn't have us work because there was no work my card I used to clock in stopped working.
- isoprophlex 9y ago
  That sounds rough. I hope your employment conditions are more stable these days...
CryptoPunk 9y ago
I think we have a shortage of risk-taking in the corporate world, especially when the gamble has an obvious profit-seeking motive, and I think that's unfortunate. Whatever happens, a lot will be learned from this initiative.
ExactoKnight 9y ago
Lately I've been having a hard time telling the difference between "unique hash id" and UUID's. If all your blockchain is, is something akin to a decentralized database using UUID's, then you don't need a blockchain.
yitchelle 9y ago
The following truly describes the hype, the bubble, or the snake oily aspect of it. Investor beware! "As investors seek to capitalize on the popularity of currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, a number of struggling companies have reversed their fortunes, at least temporarily, simply by adding “blockchain” to their names or announcing a new cryptocurrency venture unrelated to their previous line of work. (The most notorious example is Long Island Iced Tea Corp., a beverage company that tripled its value overnight after it rebranded itself “Long Blockchain Corp.”)"
jatsign 9y ago
After some googling I found a SV company that already does everything Kodak wants to do. Not saying there can't be competition, but storing data on the blockchain just isn't that hard... https://www.binded.com https://www.binded.com
intrasight 9y ago
As a "son of Kodak" this is just too depressing.
mikestew 9y ago
Perhaps this story is why Kodak is down 15% this morning, and trading halted at one point? Can’t find any news about it, other than Kodak hit a circuit breaker. Those April puts I bought are looking better every day.
TZimberoff 9y ago
Blockchain, as well as providing an effective means to track the publication history (i.e., licensing) of any given photograph, also provides a less obvious benefit to counter a more insidious problem faced by photographers: detecting when an original photograph has been modified by Photoshop and, only then, infringed. Blockchain can provide unimpeachable evidence of its provenance by its creator. Nevertheless, despite what Kodak's CEO naively implied, infringement is NOT a photographer’s greatest problem. I can state that fact authoritatively, with decades of experience in the Commercial Photo marketplace, including behind the camera, with both empirical experience and having executed the most extensive customer development exercise ever seen in this industry. Blockchain (in photography) is a FEATURE, not a business. But for the sake of argument, let’s say that it IS the major problem. In that case, if you are a photographer who has discovered your copyrighted photograph has been infringed (whether you found out via blockchain or another already-in-use technology), how do you expect to get paid, to be made whole? Do you suppose the process will be any easier, or different, just because of blockchain? Isn't that Kodak's rationale for its foray into blockchain? An infringer, once discovered, will most likely ignore your payment demands, irrespective of whether or not you can prove copyright ownership. (Copyright ownership is implicit , anyway.) You have little or no legal recourse because it costs too much for most photographers to hire a lawyer to sue the infringer. The only way a lawyer will take your case on a contingency basis is if you have already filed a FEDERAL COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION. Registration is the key to the courtroom. It mandates a $150,000 statutory fee — i.e., backed by federal law — for each infringement of each individual use of a photograph. Now, that's a deterrent! There is nothing in Kodak’s or anyone else’s blockchain business model to account for getting paid by copyright infringers. Moreover, no wannabe player in this game has put forth a business model that will attract PROFESSIONAL photographers to contribute their content to the stock photo pipeline in the first place. How do I define "professional" you ask, and why is that important? Simple: any photographer who has already been trusted & hired by major brands & media companies to shoot commissioned jobs. That excludes about 99% of every contributor to the stock photo pipeline. But pros are the photographers from whom buyers want to license content because, right now, they complain that content sources are stale, bloated, and overused. (That's a whole 'nother topic.) But there is a BIGGER reason why blockchain is a dead end — AS A BUSINESS, not a feature — specifically in photography. As it represents a “distributed” model, blockchain antithetical to the idea of a centralized source of curated content — the very kind of content Enterprise buyers demand. From the contributing photographer's pint of view, it gives them no individual market reach; no connection with customers. As for allowing photographers to set their own prices . . . HA! That IS their biggest problem. They have no idea how to do it. Blockchain may work in a consumer-retail marketplace, but not Enterprise. And Enterprise is the larger segment in Commercial Photo, albeit grossly underserved. By "Enterprise" I specifically exclude the market currently served by Getty Images, Shutterstock, and Adobe Stock et al., which is comprised of shopkeepers, freelancers, and startups, all looking for cheap pictures to fill up their Web sites. But if your are one of that ilk of photo vendors, your business model is pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap. That means you have to sell the same picture over and over again at radically low prices to MANY DIFFERENT BUYERS to hit your revenue projections. But that's bad for buyers with a brand identity to protect. (There are a number of other, equally important reasons.)

162 points by IntronExon 9y ago

Relys 9y ago

“I would not be sleeping very well if I was involved in this,” said Jill Carlson, a blockchain consultant.

roywiggins 9y ago
Blockchain consultant sounds like a fun job, though probably the only advice I'd be able to give as one would be that same quote over and over.
- paulie_a 9y ago
  That sounds like the modern day equivalent of traveling sales men pitching cure all tonics and other scams
- pyromine 9y ago
  My roommate does PR consulting in the cyrpto space, I've never heard more bullshit come out of one person's mouth. Seems like 3 months after each project he's talking about how bs that on was, but this new project is super legit.

stickfigure 9y ago

Also covered by Matt Levine in today's Money Stuff, with his trademark hilarity: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-30/iss-tells-investors-how-they-want-to-vote https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-01-30/iss-tells... (search down for 'Kodak') It's sad how far the brand has fallen.

jpatokal 9y ago
This pretty much sums it up: The point is to build new decentralized protocols that will not be owned by any one central company, but will instead be the property of all of their users, who will fund their development by buying coins and who will then be rewarded by the increasing value and usefulness of those coins. This is not that. This is more like: WENN Digital will manage a centralized database of photo rights, and someone will stand off to the side shouting "blockchain!" occasionally when it seems like people's attention is drifting. Also, that chart in the NYT with all the Kodak-colored little boxes and arrows is buzzword comedy gold. Blockchain leads to Tensorflow because why not!
- paganel 9y ago
  The first part about institutional investors deciding which company gets to be part of a market index and which not (thus defeating the purpose of “index following”) is also very interesting. But for now everyone is happy that the “tide is lifting all boats”, that the “fundamentals are healthy” and all that, even though to me it looks sketchy as hell and reminds me of how the rating agencies were doctoring their ratings pre-2008, for “the good of their clients”.

programmarchy 9y ago

Putting proof of ownership of a photo on the blockchain is an interesting idea, but I don't understand the economics. Artists pay Kodak to register their image with the blockchain, and Kodak has a mechanism to crawl the web to find images violating this blockchain registration. Okay, great, but why would anyone want to mine their blockchain?

dev_throw 9y ago
The incentive would be to get tokens that they in theory could exchange for money on exchanges. The token's value would be determined by the free market, or by the incentives they talk about in the article: > "...such as a share of KodakOne’s revenue and access to a “marketplace” that will allow them to spend their KodakCoins on camera equipment, studios for photo shoots, and travel expenses."
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  Yeah, but that has nothing to do with the service they're offering. It's a service with random blockchain stuff grafted on. If you want to use tokens as store of value or medium of exchange, go use something like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.
  - k__ 9y ago
    Seems to me like some people can't understand the difference between tokens and blockchains. But maybe they do and thought "Well, a blockchain is a good idea to track photo ownership AND people make mad bucks with crypto currencies at the moment, we can offer a something that has to do with photos and make big money on the side"
    - CydeWeys 9y ago
      Is there truly a meaningful difference between tokens and blockchains though? Sure, the token is running one level up in the architecture hierarchy, using a blockchain or maybe even another token as its settlement layer, but from a user's perspective it doesn't act any differently. It's kind of like how, as a user, I don't know or care whether the HN webserver my browser is talking to right now is running in a VM or on bare metal. The actual use properties of tokens/coins/blockchains aren't any different.

TaylorGood 9y ago

The real gamble was Kodak offering their namesake in a token project for "no direct revenue from the public offering... receive a minority stake in WENN Digital, 3 percent of all KodakCoins issued and a royalty on future revenue." Minority ownership in a random company owned by a former fraudster and 3% of the tokens with their own name on it? So many things wrong with this. Where is the secret deal that made this happen? Did the Kodak CEO get 40% of the tokens in his personal wallet? For a multi-decade, legacy brand to entrust that guy with their future is rather bizarre. If this fails, it is quite possibly the last nail for Kodak..

empath75 9y ago
Kodak is a zombie.
- syntheticnature 9y ago
  As someone who grew up in the shadow of what once was the "Big Yellow Box" I cannot emphasize this enough -- Kodak has very little still going for it and has shrunk greatly. At this point it's probably worth the gamble to them, as that's how dire things are.
- TylerE 9y ago
  To give a few numbers... At their peak in 1988 they employed 188,000 people, with over 60,000 of those in the Rochester, NY area. Today they employ fewer than 6,000, with only about 1300 in Rochester.
  - boznz 9y ago
    6,000.. Wow! I seriously assumed just a couple of administrators
- matt_s 9y ago
  Kodak is just a brand that they essentially lease out. The various CEO's all shed any businesses that resembled something profitable in attempts to, well I don't know, help shareholders. Another imaging company where Kodak has its HQ is going through a similar but slower downturn. You could say they are ... copying them (sorry). I think when a lot of the baby boomers finally retire from the workforce, office printing will drop off a cliff as far as usage goes.

mv4 9y ago

I wish Kodak had started with a clean slate, instead of recycling WENN Digital's failed coin attempt: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1515139/000149315218000017/form8-k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1515139/000149315218... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/kodak-apparently-re-branded-a-paparazzi-licensing-platform-as-kodak-coin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/kodak-apparently...

mannykannot 9y ago
I get the impression that WENN pitched the idea to Kodak, which has been looking for straws to grasp for quite a while.

pwaai 9y ago

fuck...I just loaded up on KODK March put options.... if I don't post on HN for a while....you know why

nwsm 9y ago
you bought KODK options and didn't know about this?
- mikestew 9y ago
  Parent said puts, and (assuming they bought puts) that means they think the price will down. Which is why I’m confused by the post: you won’t be posting on HN because...you’ll be busy rolling in a bathtub of money in March? If parent sold puts, well, maybe they should stick to S&P index funds.

Apocryphon 9y ago

As a potentially marketable concept (if not necessarily an actually useful product), blockchain for visual data might not be such a bad idea. With the recent advent of AI-modified videos such as deepfakes, blockchain validation has been brought up as a solution to prove the authenticity of videos. https://www.metafilter.com/172026/AI-Generated-Fake-Revenge-Porn-is-Becoming-Increasingly-Easy-to-Do#7302200 https://www.metafilter.com/172026/AI-Generated-Fake-Revenge-... Forget copyrights, market this as a way to address Fake News.

tCfD 9y ago
What's the long term value of paying for highly redundant, (yet highly gameable) custodial tracking of a piece of digital media when a dozen competing blockchains can be flooded by a hundred perfectly identical looking fakes made by altering a single bit in a single pixel, to generate a new hash and merkle root? Will enough people care that they don't have a signed original pepekitty by banksy when essentially perfect fake copies can still be made and distributed? Blockchain does nothing to solve this
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  I think you're missing my point. The original concept framed by Kodak was protecting IP, so that freelance photographers or whomever (likely large corporations) don't have their pictures re-used. But I'm saying that blockchain watermarking could have greater immediate appeal to the public when it's reputations and lives on the line. So journalism organizations and media corporations end up buying watermark protected hardware to ensure the veracity of content.
  - duskwuff 9y ago
    But what value does "blockchain" add here? What is so special about photo watermarking that makes a traditional database unsuitable to the purpose? If anything, the transaction rate limits of current blockchain technology seem like they'd be hugely limiting for this application...

gt_ 9y ago

While I’m not going out and buying any KodakCoin, this does sound like an excuse to load up on Tri-X 400.

bradfa 9y ago
Tri-X is sold by Kodak Alaris now, not Eastman Kodak, although I'm not sure who actually manufactures it: http://imaging.kodakalaris.com/professional-photographers/photographers/professional-films http://imaging.kodakalaris.com/professional-photographers/ph... Kodak Alaris and Eastman Kodak are separate companies. Disclosure: I'm employed by Kodak Alaris.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  Is the new Ektachrome that's being released by Kodak being released by Kodak Alaris or Eastman Kodak?
  - bradfa 9y ago
    Ektachrome still photography film is a Kodak Alaris product. Kodak Alaris announced its return at CES in 2017: https://www.kodakalaris.com/en-gb/about/press-releases/2016/kodak-alaris-reintroduces-iconic-ektachrome-still-film https://www.kodakalaris.com/en-gb/about/press-releases/2016/... Eastman Kodak is also, as per that press release, going to bring Ektachrome movie film to market for their Super 8 camera.
- gt_ 9y ago
  Interesting! Does Eastman Kodak only sell movie film?
  - bradfa 9y ago
    As far as I know, yes. Kodak Alaris sells all of the Kodak brand still photography film, paper, and chemicals, as well as selling/managing/running the Kodak Moments app/website and the Kodak photo kiosks (such as can be found at Target stores in the USA). I personally work in the Kodak Alaris division which makes Kodak branded (and now also Alaris branded) document scanners. EDIT: to clarify that it's still photography film that Kodak Alaris sells under the Kodak brand.

digi_owl 9y ago

I must admit, seeing this title gets me thinking about one of Cory Doctorow's books...

johnpowell 9y ago

I know this is probably not the best place for this. But I am a bit tipsy and want to type. I was janitor at KEZI (a ABC affiliate in Eugene Oregon) and gave up and went homeless for a bit. My sister got me a room with her friend for a few months while I found a job in Portland. I had to find a job. I had about 80 in cash so I had to cover job hunting and food with that. Not a easy task. So I stole a paper from a neighbor to look at the job listings. Great.. A temp listing and only a three miles away. So I can walk there. Fuck paying 2.50 for the bus.. That is two totinos. So I am waiting after filling out a application. They basically have you sit there all day and call you if "day labor" is needed. "Labor Ready" if I remember correctly. So I go out for some air and outside there is a weekly employment thing. I flip through and there is a promising ad. It is on 21st and Holgate near Reed College.. Way to far to walk. So fuck it.. I will risk the 2.50 to take the bus there and hope for the best. In my mind I was thinking job I will probably not get or 24 packets of ramen. The job was at Qualex. Basically Kodak. We did all the film possessing in Oregon. And yes.. I got hired. I worked in the digital room. Which was basically turning digital images upright and burning CD's. Processing thousands of images a shift. Calling the police when we hit kiddie porn, processing the images from murder scenes. The cops used us. So many suicide photos. They did not prepare us for this. Yes, suicide with a shotgun is possible. That was my Monday. I was fired because of 9/11. I went to work on 9/11 and there was a note on the time machine spouting shit about "respect" and "mourning" and that we didn't need to come in. Which is bullshit. We didn't need to come in since nobody wanted film developed that day. And a call letting me know before I spent 90 minutes on the bus would have been fab. So the next day it was all cool and during lunch I bitched. Shocker. After I said they didn't have us work because there was no work my card I used to clock in stopped working.

isoprophlex 9y ago
That sounds rough. I hope your employment conditions are more stable these days...

CryptoPunk 9y ago

I think we have a shortage of risk-taking in the corporate world, especially when the gamble has an obvious profit-seeking motive, and I think that's unfortunate. Whatever happens, a lot will be learned from this initiative.

ExactoKnight 9y ago

Lately I've been having a hard time telling the difference between "unique hash id" and UUID's. If all your blockchain is, is something akin to a decentralized database using UUID's, then you don't need a blockchain.

yitchelle 9y ago

The following truly describes the hype, the bubble, or the snake oily aspect of it. Investor beware! "As investors seek to capitalize on the popularity of currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, a number of struggling companies have reversed their fortunes, at least temporarily, simply by adding “blockchain” to their names or announcing a new cryptocurrency venture unrelated to their previous line of work. (The most notorious example is Long Island Iced Tea Corp., a beverage company that tripled its value overnight after it rebranded itself “Long Blockchain Corp.”)"

jatsign 9y ago

After some googling I found a SV company that already does everything Kodak wants to do. Not saying there can't be competition, but storing data on the blockchain just isn't that hard... https://www.binded.com https://www.binded.com

intrasight 9y ago

As a "son of Kodak" this is just too depressing.

mikestew 9y ago

Perhaps this story is why Kodak is down 15% this morning, and trading halted at one point? Can’t find any news about it, other than Kodak hit a circuit breaker. Those April puts I bought are looking better every day.

TZimberoff 9y ago

Blockchain, as well as providing an effective means to track the publication history (i.e., licensing) of any given photograph, also provides a less obvious benefit to counter a more insidious problem faced by photographers: detecting when an original photograph has been modified by Photoshop and, only then, infringed. Blockchain can provide unimpeachable evidence of its provenance by its creator. Nevertheless, despite what Kodak's CEO naively implied, infringement is NOT a photographer’s greatest problem. I can state that fact authoritatively, with decades of experience in the Commercial Photo marketplace, including behind the camera, with both empirical experience and having executed the most extensive customer development exercise ever seen in this industry. Blockchain (in photography) is a FEATURE, not a business. But for the sake of argument, let’s say that it IS the major problem. In that case, if you are a photographer who has discovered your copyrighted photograph has been infringed (whether you found out via blockchain or another already-in-use technology), how do you expect to get paid, to be made whole? Do you suppose the process will be any easier, or different, just because of blockchain? Isn't that Kodak's rationale for its foray into blockchain? An infringer, once discovered, will most likely ignore your payment demands, irrespective of whether or not you can prove copyright ownership. (Copyright ownership is implicit , anyway.) You have little or no legal recourse because it costs too much for most photographers to hire a lawyer to sue the infringer. The only way a lawyer will take your case on a contingency basis is if you have already filed a FEDERAL COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION. Registration is the key to the courtroom. It mandates a $150,000 statutory fee — i.e., backed by federal law — for each infringement of each individual use of a photograph. Now, that's a deterrent! There is nothing in Kodak’s or anyone else’s blockchain business model to account for getting paid by copyright infringers. Moreover, no wannabe player in this game has put forth a business model that will attract PROFESSIONAL photographers to contribute their content to the stock photo pipeline in the first place. How do I define "professional" you ask, and why is that important? Simple: any photographer who has already been trusted & hired by major brands & media companies to shoot commissioned jobs. That excludes about 99% of every contributor to the stock photo pipeline. But pros are the photographers from whom buyers want to license content because, right now, they complain that content sources are stale, bloated, and overused. (That's a whole 'nother topic.) But there is a BIGGER reason why blockchain is a dead end — AS A BUSINESS, not a feature — specifically in photography. As it represents a “distributed” model, blockchain antithetical to the idea of a centralized source of curated content — the very kind of content Enterprise buyers demand. From the contributing photographer's pint of view, it gives them no individual market reach; no connection with customers. As for allowing photographers to set their own prices . . . HA! That IS their biggest problem. They have no idea how to do it. Blockchain may work in a consumer-retail marketplace, but not Enterprise. And Enterprise is the larger segment in Commercial Photo, albeit grossly underserved. By "Enterprise" I specifically exclude the market currently served by Getty Images, Shutterstock, and Adobe Stock et al., which is comprised of shopkeepers, freelancers, and startups, all looking for cheap pictures to fill up their Web sites. But if your are one of that ilk of photo vendors, your business model is pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap. That means you have to sell the same picture over and over again at radically low prices to MANY DIFFERENT BUYERS to hit your revenue projections. But that's bad for buyers with a brand identity to protect. (There are a number of other, equally important reasons.)