So, goodbye Kodachrome. I'm not sure why I feel sad that Kodak is ending production of its iconic film stock: after all, I haven't shot a single frame of Kodachrome in many years. But it does seem like the passing of something important.

Kodak says it will continue to make processing available - at the one lab in the world where it's still done - until the end of 2010. And so K'chrome will make it to its 75th anniversary.

Why did we love it? Rich blacks and fine grain (for its day). And for less technical, more emotive reasons - like the thrill of getting that little yellow box through the mail.

It wasn't always the most convenient film stock. The special processing requirements meant that most of us, for most of the years the film was available, had to send it away to Kodak and wait several days for its return. None of that one-hour turnaround you get with E-6 processed films.

Kodak did what it could to cut the waiting time. For a period, in the UK, you could drop off your film at KJP in Soho and then, the next day, scoot down to Wimbledon to pick up the processed slides. I remember doing that with a writer friend when we'd come back from covering the Reno air races. Too impatient to wait until we got home, we sat in his car opening one after another of the little yellow boxes, holding transparencies up to the light and grunting with joy whenever we found a gem - much the same way as we 'togs now chimp with our digital cameras.

But on the whole, you always knew you were going to have to wait, and that was part of K'chrome's charm.

It was slow in other ways, too. The first roll I ever used was rated at ISO 25 (well, actually, 25 ASA in those days). Most of the Kodachrome I shot - and I've shot thousands of rolls - was the ISO 64 stock. And Kodak did introduce an ISO 200 version. But as I mentioned, one of the qualities we so loved with K'chrome was its grain, and you couldn't beat the ISO 25 version for that.

Of course, it was lucky to get this far. When I was writing for the photographic press, back in the 1980s, there were constant rumours of Kodak trying to kill off the film. It was difficult and expensive to manufacture and process. Kodak, it was said, wanted to concentrate on more modern, faster and more profitable products, like Ektachrome.

Kodak made mistakes, too - like the time it switched from card mounts to plastic ones. Photographers were up in arms. Those nasty plastic frames created static and so attracted dust: and they seemed to glue themselves to the lightbox. If you wanted to pick up a transparency, you had to slide it to the edge of lightbox. And if you wanted to write on the mount, you needed a special felt-tip pen, not just any old pen or pencil you had lying around. (I often used a Rotring draughtsman's pen with a very fine tip which allowed me to write an enormous amount of information on that tiny mount.)

The mount was indeed a major part of Kodachrome's character and attraction. It had the same effect as putting a print in a picture frame. Seeing a row of Kodachrome transparencies laid out on the lightbox was like seeing pictures at an exhibition. It gave the images authority. And the mount framed the image the same way we'd framed the scene in the viewfinder. The Kodachrome slide was itself a finished work, worthy of admiration. Who cares if the image got published?

At other times, Kodak was enthusiastic about its most famous film. There was the release of that ISO 200 version, and the professional emulsions. And Kodak even encouraged independent processing houses to set up Kodachrome lines. Very few did, being put off by the enormous cost and high maintenance. But the brave souls who invested in K'chrome lines finally made it possible for us to push process the film. Turned out, it wasn't a good idea, and certainly never more than a stop.

Yet, in spite of its charm and technical qualities, Kodachrome started losing its grip on professional and amateur photographers some time ago. I remember a trip with a bunch of other photography journalists to Tokyo and Penang in 1984, as the guests of Nikon. We were festooned with enough cameras to make even Japanese tourists envious. And nearly every one of those cameras was loaded with the new Fuji films. Kodachrome just couldn't compete with new film technologies. Kodak says that current sales of K'chrome account for a fraction of one per cent of its film sales: that's a tiny slice of a dwindling market. Digital is, of course, the final nail in the coffin.

While I haven't shot Kodachrome for a long time, I still have frequent occasion to appreciate its qualities. As I scan my archive of images, I can see how well 20+ year old transparencies are holding up: Kodachrome was always claimed to have a much longer archival life than any other emulsion. And when I pull the pictures up in Photoshop, viewing at 100% to check for dust spots, I'm constantly wowed by the resolution and tonal qualities of this great emulsion.

And so the film may be out of production, but with some many images in professional photographers' archives, in photo libraries and in amateurs' cherished portfolios, Kodachrome will be with us in some way for many years to come.

When Google starting scanning books, most people were for it. The idea was simple: Google wanted you to be able to search 'offline' content - that great resource of knowledge sitting in libraries - as well as the web.

And so, starting with a few university libraries, Google Book Search's teams dragged dusty tomes down from shelves and began scanning.

The idea was that Google would index the contents, making them searchable, but present just a snippet or abstract when you made the search. If you wanted the full text, you could head off to a library in the traditional fashion. In that way, what Google was doing fell under 'fair use' provisions in copyright law. And it all seemed like a terribly good idea.

But that's not where we've ended up. Google is now looking at a potential goldmine, exploiting other people's work.

Tell it to the judge

The whole process has been mired in lawsuits, and the prospect of those suits being resolved has created even more of a stir.

Some people were never happy with what Google was up to. The Author's Guild, the American Association of Publishers and a bunch of publishers brought an action against Google, saying that what it was doing didn't fall under fair use provision. Google has now come to an agreement with these people which would not only let it carry on, but would give Google an effective monopoly on exploiting e-book versions of the texts.

Authors and publishers can register at Google Book Settlement. Once they've 'claimed' their own books, they can either ask Google to pay them a royalty on any monies it makes, or they can have their books removed from the system.

(Incidentally, call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but why does the login system on that site fail to work properly when I use Firefox or Opera on my Mac? I ended up having to use Safari. It couldn't be that they're trying to make claiming books difficult, could it?)

This business has left a lot of authors and publishers very unhappy. It's all very well Google settling with the original claimants, but that leaves a lot of rights owners who haven't agreed anything and whose works Google will nonetheless exploit. Now the case is being referred to the US Justice Department for potential anti-trust implications.

The problem with orphans

In common with other forms of intellectual property (IP) exploitation, the really sneaky part of all this has to do with orphans. 

In IP terms, an orphan is a 'work' (a book, say, or photograph) which would normally have the protection of intellectual property laws, but where the IP owner cannot be identified or traced.

As the current proposals stand, Google would have an e-book monopoly on any orphan titles it scans. It can sell them and pocket all the profit. It could, in effect, censor books by simply not offering them for download.

And for a book to be classed as an orphan, it simply needs to be unclaimed by the rights holder. This is entirely the wrong way around.

Works without parents 

Books aren't the only entities threatened by witless orphan works legislation. There have been numerous attempts to push an orphan works bill through Congress in the US which would significantly affect photographers.

In essence, such legislation would stipulate that anyone who comes across a photograph that has no identifying information attached as to the copyright owner, can use that image freely after making a reasonable effort to ascertain whether it's copyright protected. Quite what amounts to 'reasonable' is still a moot point.

Photographers try to protect digital images by embedding information in, for example, the IPTC and EXIF metadata of the image. But these are too easily stripped (and some image-sharing websites strip this data automatically). And digital images are easily stored, transmitted and shared. Once an image is out there, it's hard to control where it goes.

There is talk of establishing privately run databases of images. It would be up to each photographer to submit images to these registries. If someone finds an image, contacting and searching these registries would be deemed a 'reasonable' effort.

This is wrong on so many levels.

First, it puts the onus on the image creators to take that extra step - which would almost certainly involve cost - to obtain something they already own: copyright protection. In most places in the world, an image creator automatically owns copyright in the work. But under this kind of scheme, that copyright would be practically worthless unless you pay some private organisation a fee. This is known as a protection racket.

The registries provide no extra value - they would be simple parasites living off the work of others.

Burden of proof

And the same is true of Google and its e-book monopoly. It should not be able to assume that it can exploit a work just because it doesn't know who owns the rights.

This whole attitude is approaching copyright from the wrong direction. Given that copyright is created automatically, we should have a system whereby it is assumed that a work is rights protected. The onus should not be on the rights owner to take extra steps (and possibly incur cost) to protect their natural and automatic rights. The onus should be on the organisation that wants to exploit that work to prove that there is no hindrance to doing so. If they can't establish that proof, then don't exploit the work.

The Internet is already awash with parasites - such as bloggers leeching images from other sites. This Google settlement and the putative orphan works bills would institutionalise this parasitic behaviour, and would be another nail in the coffin for those who wish to make a living from creative work.

"There's a mouse in the living room," said Trish.

That's not an uncommon way to start the day. By the time Trish had found her gardening gloves, the little critter had scarpered. She never got a good look at it - just knew it was there by the way the curtain was twitching and the cats were staring in that transfixedly hungry way.

When I entered the living room, I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Then I saw it and I was confused. Not a mouse, I realised quickly. Too big. I had to recalibrate: I'd been consciously expecting a mouse and my perceptual systems were geared for that. A vole, then? Recalibrate again. My morning, not-yet-caffeinated brain finally ground into gear.

A mole.

I coralled it while calling to Trish to get her gloves on. After some chasing, she grabbed the slippery blighter.

The mole screamed and bit into the gloves. It was chomping its way through. Trish's fingers would be next.

Trish got it outside and dropped it into the cider press garden. That's the last of that, we thought.

We were, of course, wrong.

Half-an-hour later I was in the courtyard and saw it scurrying towards the house. Zola, our spaniel, and Rockwell, a tabby cat, looked on with faintly surprised fascination. It wouldn't be long, though, before they'd switch into hunt mode. I ordered Zola into the house and grabbed my gardening gloves.

Picking up a mole is harder than you might think. The fur is sleek and they squirm a lot. And they bite.

It turned and twisted and shrieked, waved its stubby little forelegs in fury and finally sank its teeth into the glove. I knew my time was brief.

I ran to the edge of the nearby wood and dropped the critter into a gap in some nettles, where the cats couldn't go after it easily. I thought I saw a wound in its side, so maybe it had already tussled with the cats. But I couldn't be sure. I hope it lives, for all that it so viciously resisted our attempts to help it.

I went to relate my story to Trish. She told me she'd just had an encounter with a very large spider. Then she ordered me to be very still and pass her a tissue. The spider?

No, thankfully. A caterpillar. A weird little bugger, too. It looked exactly like a small piece of lichen-covered twig, until it moved. It was about 5cm long with four big hind legs for gripping while its front end (with six more legs) reared up to look around. I managed a snap of it. If you know what it is, please tell us.

Publishers are deeply conservative. The book trade is one of the older professions and its habits change at a genteel, evolutionary pace. It’s not surprising, then, that one trade journalist recently described publishers as "late adopters" of technology.

They’re going to have to get over that.

In the face of the cultural and commercial revolution wrought by the Internet and other new technologies, the response of too many in the publishing world is to stick their fingers in their ears and intone loudly, "this is not how we do it, this is not how we do it".

The problem with change is that it happens whether or not you want it. Adapt or die.

That's not to say that all changes are for the good. Far from it. I’ve argued elsewhere, for example, that new attitudes and approaches engendered by digital technology and the web are killing photojournalism without replacing it with anything worthwhile.

But there is much that is good about the web and the possibilities it presents. People used to sneer at blogging: now it is seen as essential for authors and businesses, and the best bloggers make money and provoke social and political change. Twitter is the most recent application of new technology to move from object of ridicule to social phenomenon.

So how have publishers reacted to the new opportunities and paradigms of innovative technology? Well, mostly they haven’t. Some have toyed with e-books, but mostly by reformatting backlists in a "let’s hope this goes away" fashion. They all have websites, but largely as 'brochureware' or simple shop windows.

As for self-publishing, the (perhaps inevitable) response has been to condemn it as vanity publishing and the domain of the gullible. It’s not ‘real’ publishing. After all, self-publishing never involves expensive lunches.

So the responses to new technology from the mainstream publishing world have ranged from indifference, through incomprehension to occasional panic. But at least some are trying. For instance, a major theme of the current London Book Fair is "how the hell do we make money out of e-books?" (I'm paraphrasing). Here are some other examples:

Authonomy

HarperCollins has its Authonomy website which harnesses the energy of social networking as a way of replacing the slush pile. Would-be authors upload their works for others to read. And those readers may leave comments and vote for books they like. Each month, the five top-ranked books are read by HarperCollins.

It’s an interesting, but flawed, model. In theory, members of Authonomy provide a filtering process so that HarperCollins need read only the best works, which should rise naturally to the top of the pile. In reality, the system is easily gamed, and it becomes a popularity contest in which the winners are those willing to put in the most effort and engage in the most schmoozing: it seems to have little to do with the quality of the work. But it was a brave attempt at actually using the power of the web.

Litopia

The Litopia website is older and more established. In essence, it’s a straightforward forum. But it’s run under the aegis of literary agent Peter Cox of Redhammer Management. And for the best and most active participants there’s an opportunity to pitch your work to the agency.
Again, this is a virtual alternative to the slush pile. It’s good for the agent, but means that authors need to invest considerably more work just to get themselves in front of this one agent.

Whether you feel this is worthwhile may depend to a great extent on how valuable you find the forum itself: it is one of the better forums on the web. If your only ambition in using it is to be able to pitch to the agent, however, it’s probably not an effective use of your time and energy.

Macmillan New Writing

Macmillian has taken a very different approach. Perhaps it recognised that self-publishing is here to stay, and that it is on the same trajectory from derision to acceptance as other technology-based phenomena.

With its Macmillan New Writing (MNW) imprint, the company is attempting to embrace this phenomenon within its business model.

MNW uses the Print on Demand (POD) technology that has spawned the self-publishing market to produce the books. It doesn’t accept all comers, the way services such as Lulu or CreateSpace do: it vets and selects the titles it wants to publish. However, authors don’t receive advances. They get a 20% royalty on sales and a 50% cut of other rights deals.

That’s actually not bad. With a conventional publishing deal, an author’s contract might stipulate a royalty of 10-15%, depending on the edition and various other factors. According to stats I’ve seen, however, special deals and discounting often mean that an author actually sees average royalties of 8%.

With self-publishing, an author might receive around 40% of the cover price for sales made directly (eg, when a customer buys the book via Lulu.com). But with retail sales (eg, via Amazon), that drops to around 12-13%.

MNW does provide some support for the author, in terms of distribution and arranging reviews — far more than you would get with any self-publishing operation, even if you pay for some of the expensive options that the likes of Lulu, Wordclay et al offer.

But MNW has been criticised for not giving the books ‘proper’ distribution and marketing support. The imprint has also attracted flak for not providing proper editing of the books, the way they would with a mainstream title. (However, my experience of many mainstream books recently has been that editing standards have greatly slipped, an impression supported by this article in the Guardian.)

MNW is having some notable successes. Ann Weisgarber has been nominated for two Orange Awards. Her book The Personal History of Rachel Dupree is on the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009 longlist and the Orange Award for New Writers 2009.

Of course, there are those who turn up their noses at anything new. At least one critic has dismissed MNW as the "RyanAir of publishing". This is precisely the kind of smug pomposity that is drearily familiar among the old guard of publishing.

Macmillan is at least trying to accommodate new ideas. The rest of the industry, it seems, just wants things to remain the same — even though that is clearly proving to be a road to faliure. After all, they’ve made it into the club, it must seem very frightening to them that others don’t care about the way things used to be done. It’s time for them to take the fingers out of their ears.

The National Trust (NT) is a fine organisation, on the whole. It does wonderful work protecting the UK's heritage and landscape. I was even a member when I lived in the UK. But it has recently shown an ugly side, too.

Library attack

Numerous professional photographers who have stock pictures with the Alamy agency have just been told that some of their images are being removed from the library. These are pictures of NT properties and it's the NT that has requested their removal.

The National Trust is a charity. But that's not who is going after the photographers. NT Enterprises Ltd is the profit-making, commercial arm of the organisation and incorporates the NT Picture Library (NTPL). Apparently, the NTPL feels it deserves a monopoly on pictures of NT properties.

The National Trust places severe restrictions on photography. It states that visitors may use pictures they take purely for personal consumption. And that's fair enough if you have paid to enter the property (in which case you are effectively entering into an agreement with the NT). But it is possible to photograph many NT properties without even knowing you're doing it - and certainly without being aware of or agreeing to any terms and conditions. These properties aren't just buildings - they can include areas of land, so landscape photographers beware.

It's possible to take a picture while walking on publicly and freely accessible land only to have the NT descend on you and tell you you have no right to do what you want with your own pictures.

If you can show that the picture was taken from a public road or footpath, the NT will back down. It has to. It doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. But what about if you were on NT land but didn't pay to be there - such as a coastal footpath? There's no way you could be aware of the NT's photography restrictions and it's highly unlikely they could impose them retrospectively.

The attempt by the NT to unilaterally and retroactively impose restrictions and limits on the use of your own pictures is both immoral and legally dubious.

Besides which, this is supposed to be our heritage and our land for which they are just the custodians.

The NT is being extremely heavy-handed and arrogant by adopting this aggressive stance, and only backing down when challenged.

By attacking photographers via Alamy (and possibly other agencies) the NT may be guilty of restriction of trade. There's more on the Copyright Action site.

Unfair competition

Meanwhile, the NT is running a competition - dubbed 'Picture Yourself'. Like so many photo competitions these days, it seems little more than a cheap way of building a stock of images. How so? Because by entering the competition you hand the NT full rights to exploit your pictures any way they like.

The website for the competition has made one serious technical error. Entries to the competition are displayed on the site without any apparent vetting. The inestimable Pro-Imaging.org site has a campaign against rights grabbing by competitions and has designed a 'spoiler' image for just such occasions, and so visitors to the NT competition were treated to the following 'entry':

Needless to say, it was soon taken down. But it was just as soon reposted. Quickly, other photographers joined in the fun. Copyright Action's web page shows some of the best entries, my current favourite being:

It doesn't end there, either. As Copyright Action has pointed out here and here, clauses in the rules for other NT supported competitions not only forbid you to place pictures of NT properties into photo libraries or otherwise use them commercially, they also attempt to prevent you entering them into any competitions that the NT hasn't approved. So even amateur photographers could fall foul of the NT's Draconian, greedy and arrogant rights grabs.