Van dingen die voorbijkomen

I was both surprised and saddened to learn that Peter M., the Oxford-based philosophy editor for OUP who has made OUP the indispensable philosophy catalogue during his tenure, will be leaving OUP December 15 after thirty years of working with... Brian Leiter

A longtime member of the Department of Philosophy (and the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program) at Washington University, St. Louis, where he was emeritus he was also an important Chair of the Department. His philosophical work was in aesthetics and philosophy of cognitive... Brian Leiter

A longtime faculty member (in political science) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Professor Avineri was best-known among philosophers for his work on Hegel and on Marx. The Haaretz obituary testifies to his importance as a public figure and intellectual... Brian Leiter

Vanaf vandaag staat voor het project LLM’s in debat een opdracht open staan voor het finetunen van twee LLM’s. De opdracht gunnen wij na een open inschrijvingsperiode. De deadline om mee te dingen is 17 december 2023.

Open State heeft zich als doel gesteld om de impact van generatieve AI op transparantie en de democratie te onderzoeken. Die voorziene impact lijkt enorm; wat betekent het voor de democratische rechtsstaat wanneer een AI een Kamer debat kan voeren, hiervan kan leren en zichzelf kan verbeteren? Om te onderzoeken wat de risico’s zijn en welke maatregelen nodig zijn willen we twee modellen met elkaar in debat laten gaan.

From the bowels of Twitter: Brian Leiter

Shane MacGowan died yesterday, less than a month shy of his 66th birthday — and thus less than a month shy of Christmas, which happened to be the same day. Though coincidental, that association has made perfect sense since 1987, when the Pogues, the Celtic punk band fronted by MacGowan, released “Fairytale of New York.” That duet between MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl (the story of whose production we’ve previously featured here on Open Culture) still reigns supreme as the United Kingdom’s Christmas song, and by now it tends also to make it onto more than a few holiday-season playlists in America and across the world.

Given the popularity of “Fairytale of New York,” many listeners know MacGowan for nothing else. But he was, in fact, a figure of considerable importance to the punk rock of the nineteen-eighties and nineties, to which he brought not just a thoroughly Irish sensibility but also a strong sense of literary craft.

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Few well-known punk rockers could inhabit a place with a song in the way he could, or tap into the proper vernacular to inhabit a particular character. (Even the words he gave MacColl to sing as a hard-bitten nineteen-forties woman of the streets have caused no end of struggles with censors.) For this reason, he had the respect of many another serious songwriter: Nick Cave, for instance, with whom he recorded a cover of “What a Wonderful World” in 1992.

During much of MacGowan’s lifetime, his musical achievements were at risk of being overshadowed by the harrowing facts of his life, including his massive, sustained consumption of drugs and alcohol and the variety of injuries and ailments it brought about. In 2015, British television even aired a special about the replacement of his long-lost teeth — which, to judge by the Pogues’ performance of the folk song “The Irish Rover” with the Dubliners above, were barely hanging on even in the late eighties. But in a way, this dissolute appearance was an inseparable part of a distinctive artistic spirit. Shane MacGowan was a rare thing in the world of punk rock (to say nothing of the world of hit Christmas songs): not just an Irish literary voice, but an Irish literary character.

Related content:

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Stream a Playlist of 68 Punk Rock Christmas Songs: The Ramones, The Damned, Bad Religion & More

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

Worried that holiday entertaining may put you in danger of overspending?

Preserve your bank account and those joyful festive feelings by serving your friends onion sandwiches.

We assure you, they come with the utmost of culinary pedigrees.

Esteemed chef and cookbook author Jacques Pépin happily demonstrates the simple recipe, above, confiding that it was a favorite of his late wife’s.

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Everything tastes better when cooked with love, even if the chef’s not doing much more than slicing a couple of half moons from an onion and slathering bread with mayo.

(If you’re allergic to either of those ingredients, try swapping them out for radishes and butter.)

Pépin credits his old friend, James Beard, “America’s first foodie”, with the recipe. It caused a sensation when Beard published it in 1965’s Menus for Entertaining.

He revisited the subject in 1974’s Beard on Food: The Best Recipes and Kitchen Wisdom from the Dean of American Cooking, while unabashedly fanboying over the humble vegetable in its many forms, from tiny pearl onions to “big delicate Bermudas and the enormous Spanish variety that are in season from fall to late spring:”

Just the other day I was enchanted to receive a box of these giant golden globes, perfectly matched in size and contour, that flourish in the volcanic soil of Oregon and Idaho. They make absolutely superb eating. I love them raw, thinly sliced, with a hamburger or cold meats or in a hearty, flavorful onion sandwich.

The day my gift box arrived I happened to have some slightly stale homemade bread, about two or three days old. I sliced this very thin, buttered it well, covered it with paper-thin slices of Spanish onion, sprinkled them with some coarse salt, and pressed another slice of bread firmed on the top—and there was my supper. I can easily make a whole meal of onion sandwiches, for to me they are one of the greatest treats I know…

Delightful! But hold up a sec. The New York Times’ Tejal Rao, reports that Beard, who had a “reputation for chronic, unapologetic plagiarism” apparently “lifted” the recipe from cookbook authors Irma and Bill Rhode, his one-time partners in a New York City catering company:

It was basic but confident, and it came together with inexpensive ingredients. It was so good that you could easily eat a dozen, and so simple that it barely required a recipe. You glance at the directions, feeling a little silly rolling the sandwiches in chopped parsley, a crucial step that makes the sandwich, and that Irma Rhode said came from Beard. You’d make it once, and then the dish would be committed to memory — as James Beard’s onion sandwich.

Sandwiches of History’s Barry W. Enderwick digs even deeper, truffling up a remarkably terse onion sandwich recipe in Mattie Lee Wehrley’s The Handy Household Hints and Recipes, from 1916.

Interesting how Ms. Wehrley takes care to note that the Toasted Cheese on Bread published directly below that Onion Sandwich is a recipe of her own invention.

It appears we all borrow from the best. Surely, there’s no reason not to get creative and make that onion sandwich your own.

You could start by varying the ingredients…

Soak some slices of red onion in cold water for 5 minutes to take away their raw bite.

Experiment with pumpernickel or dark rye.

Chop up a blend of windowsill herbs for that showy, savory edge.

Or y’know, buy an onion, a bagel and cream cheese as separate components, assemble, and boom!

As Beard remarked, “Designing hors d’oeuvres is not different from designing sets and costumes . . . Food is very much theater.”

Basic Onion Sandwich (serves one):

Remove the crusts from 2 slices of bread or cut them into rounds, reserving the scraps for a more involved recipe requiring breadcrumbs 

Spread mayonnaise on the face of both pieces

Remove a thin slice from the thickest part of a sweet onion and place atop one of the prepared slices

.Sprinkle with sea salt and top with the other slice of bread.

Spread mayonnaise around the perimeter of the sandwich, and roll in the chopped herbs.

(Can refrigerate for up to 6 hours before serving)

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– Ayun Halliday is the Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine and author, most recently, of Creative, Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto and Creative, Not Famous Activity Book. Follow her @AyunHalliday.

Een man die de auto van zijn bezoek te laat aanmeldde omdat naar eigen zeggen de inloggegevens uit de bezoekersapplicatie op de telefoon waren verdwenen moet de door de gemeente opgelegde parkeerboete gewoon betalen. Dat las ik bij Security.nl. Je app achttien minuten te laat aanzetten is te laat, en de loginproblemen zijn jouw probleem?

Een bezoeker van de man parkeerde op een betaaldparkerenplaats om 14.51. De man meldde het bezoek echter pas om 15.09 aan via de bezoekersapplicatie op zijn telefoon. Om 15.01 had een parkeerambtenaar al gezien dat de auto zonder parkeerbelasting te hebben betaald was geparkeerd.

Juridisch is het zo dat als jij andermans parkeerbelasting betaalt, jij degene bent die de auto parkeert vanuit het perspectief van de Gemeentewet. Daarom kreeg deze man dus de naheffing en niet de persoon die feitelijk parkeerde. En waarom het misging? Uit het vonnis: Eiser voert aan dat hem in redelijkheid niet kan worden verweten dat het voertuig niet eerder dan om 15:09 uur heeft aangemeld in de bezoekersapplicatie op de telefoon. Bij het openen van de app waren de inloggegevens verdwenen. Omdat het parkeerabonnement op naam staat van zijn partner, kon eiser het voertuig niet aanmelden zonder haar hulp en zij was op dat moment niet in de buurt. Na contact met zijn partner bleek dat de inloggegevens op haar telefoon ook waren verdwenen. Het wachtwoord moest via e-mail worden aangepast waardoor het uiteindelijk pas om 15.09 uur is gelukt om het voertuig aan te melden. Eiser heeft wel tijdig gepoogd om het voertuig aan te melden. Wellicht dat er meer mensen dit probleem bekend voorkomt, bijvoorbeeld na een update van de app of een migratie naar een nieuwe telefoon. Maar juridisch is dat dus echt jóuw probleem.

Weliswaar zegt de wet dat je een redelijke termijn moet krijgen om de parkeerbelasting te betalen, maar dat is hooguit een minuut of vijf, en niet de twintig die hier werden overbrugd. Die termijn gaat grofweg over de tijd om naar een ouderwetse automaat te lopen en daar te betalen.

Wellicht had dit anders kunnen lopen als de bezoeker bij de auto was gebleven. De rechter merkt namelijk op: Doordat er in geval van eiser niemand in of nabij het voertuig is gebleven, is het risico ontstaan dat er in de tussenliggende tijd een parkeercontrole plaatsvond. De gevolgen hiervan komen voor rekening en risico van eiser. De bezoeker had na een paar minuten vruchteloos proberen kunnen zeggen, ik loop naar de automaat en betaal even voor een kwartier. Of de hele verwachte parkeerduur en dan onderling verrekenen.

De les is dus: controleer of de app het doet voordat je bezoek er is.

Arnoud

 

 

Het bericht Rechter houdt parkeerboete na verdwenen inloggegevens in stand verscheen eerst op Ius Mentis.

There are certain file formats which seem to be fairly mainstream and come up frequently from a variatey for sources. Then you find one from a specialized niche industry. I recently came across a file with the HUS extension and it led me down a path of a family of formats I didn’t know existed. The world of embroidery formats has been around for quite some time and is quite confusing. There are many manufacturers of embroidery machines and over the years have merged with each other or upgraded to include new features all requiring changes to the file formats used by the systems.

Embroidery stitching designs are a unique file formats. They are images, probably vector, but with stitching information included in the file which determines the color of thread used and pattern used.

I took a data set of many different embroidery files from here and ran it through Siegfried.

That is pretty bleak. Not a single file identified except a few using an OLE container and a couple files which may be plain bitmaps. I have started to document where each of these formats come from on the File Format Wiki, but there are so many formats to research. The triple XXX format research has its other challenges…..

Today I wanted to focus on one brand, Husqvarna, a Swedish company with a long history.

Export Formats in Premier+ Software

Husqvarna has made sewing machines or quite some time. In the late 1970’s machines started to enter the market which were “computerized”. It was in the early 1990’s when the embroidery machines could take a memory card full of stitching patterns, then later could take a floppy disk or USB drive full of custom made designs. Let’s take a look at a few of the formats, starting with the extension .HUS.

First a sample with a 1994 last modified date:

hexdump -C Bow.hus | head 00000000 5b af c8 00 1a 09 00 00 01 00 00 00 98 01 67 01 |[.............g.| 00000010 6f fe 9b fe 2c 00 00 00 47 00 00 00 0e 07 00 00 |o...,...G.......| 00000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 07 00 00 10 38 84 |..............8.| 00000030 81 af f8 d9 6e bc 5e c1 b4 1d fc b2 00 00 00 0c |....n.^.........| 00000040 93 03 49 98 00 e5 f0 07 41 77 75 c6 49 c6 ff e2 |..I.....Awu.I...| 00000050 80 aa aa 08 00 28 82 a8 b2 49 27 5e dd ae ba ee |.....(...I'^....| 00000060 db 78 05 bc 4b ef 00 37 f0 da db b5 d6 ee 93 9e |.x..K..7........| 00000070 55 15 01 00 44 00 05 51 01 3e 16 cf db ce 2c bc |U...D..Q.>....,.| 00000080 ad db 48 97 cb e5 f2 fe fc 63 79 e7 a3 a1 46 80 |..H......cy...F.| 00000090 5c 37 f0 10 41 43 a1 40 21 c7 a5 d2 6e 82 0a 20 |\7..AC.@!...n.. |

Then one from around 1996:

hexdump -C ROSEBUD.HUS | head 00000000 5b ff c8 00 5f 0b 00 00 04 00 00 00 ce 00 69 01 |[..._.........i.| 00000010 01 ff 17 fe 3a 00 00 00 66 00 00 00 97 09 00 00 |....:...f.......| 00000020 00 6b 6e 6c 6a 6b 00 00 00 00 0a 00 19 00 1a 00 |.knljk..........| 00000030 0e 00 1a 00 05 00 a4 a2 00 10 00 19 42 88 80 35 |............B..5| 00000040 ff 4d 96 0d c1 72 49 6e 09 00 c8 72 ee 90 76 93 |.M...rIn...r..v.| 00000050 47 ca 20 00 00 4a 32 b1 d4 d4 08 e1 e7 86 d3 50 |G. ..J2........P| 00000060 20 0f 2f 1a 63 e0 09 66 7e ed f0 85 b9 37 fd 12 | ./.c..f~....7..| 00000070 2c 89 09 01 02 00 30 33 33 00 44 96 4b 36 49 65 |,.....033.D.K6Ie| 00000080 bd d7 77 7e df bb cd f4 9b db e7 6f 5b 76 ed b1 |..w~.......o[v..| 00000090 2d b6 49 08 03 31 81 8c 00 02 44 91 22 24 b2 5f |-.I..1....D."$._|

And another from 1998:

hexdump -C FLOWER.HUS | head 00000000 5d fc c8 00 de 23 00 00 04 00 00 00 79 01 e5 01 |]....#......y...| 00000010 87 fe 1b fe 32 00 00 00 e0 00 00 00 51 1b 00 00 |....2.......Q...| 00000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0e 00 03 00 0c 00 |................| 00000030 05 00 00 69 53 6d 82 36 bf f0 d8 7a 55 c1 0b b6 |...iSm.6...zU...| 00000040 fd b9 52 ff da 61 20 20 14 6a 31 1d e8 1c b0 7f |..R..a .j1.....| 00000050 92 cc 48 0c 38 59 16 49 6d 71 11 39 00 00 1e 10 |..H.8Y.Imq.9....| 00000060 4c fc 18 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0f 68 67 e0 be 11 |L..........hg...| 00000070 17 88 d5 2b 13 c4 5b 33 a2 98 f7 b9 6e 2d dc 62 |...+..[3....n-.b| 00000080 ba 5e 8f 50 bf 09 f9 28 13 38 29 2a de 47 f4 c1 |.^.P...(.8)*.G..| 00000090 9c 3e d6 37 bc 8c ad 95 f0 b3 c1 97 bc fb 1f b5 |.>.7............|

After 1998 Viking Husqvarna merged with the Pfaff brand and a new format with the extension .VIP was used. I found a couple variants of this format.

hexdump -C Magic Flower.vip | head 00000000 5d fc 90 01 0e 06 00 00 01 00 00 00 3e 01 19 01 |]...........>...| 00000010 c2 fe e7 fe 6e 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 c8 04 00 00 |....n...........| 00000020 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 36 00 00 00 89 bf |..........6.....| 00000030 93 fc 01 00 00 00 1a 00 00 00 46 00 6c 00 6f 00 |..........F.l.o.| 00000040 72 00 61 00 6c 00 3b 00 20 00 41 00 62 00 73 00 |r.a.l.;. .A.b.s.| 00000050 74 00 72 00 61 00 63 00 74 00 3b 00 20 00 46 00 |t.r.a.c.t.;. .F.| 00000060 61 00 73 00 68 00 69 00 6f 00 6e 00 00 00 00 0b |a.s.h.i.o.n.....| 00000070 38 68 61 2f f8 6c 9d 68 63 47 07 80 09 c0 6b e0 |8ha/.l.hcG....k.| 00000080 04 9f 6d eb 70 c5 4b 3f e0 00 7d 52 4a 45 66 6f |..m.p.K?..}RJEfo| 00000090 bf 1e f5 41 be f6 50 44 90 02 21 fd 6f 39 bd 71 |...A..PD..!.o9.q|

The three HUS files and the VIP files have a similar first 4 bytes. Should make an easy signature.

With the addition of the TruE mySewnet service and software, the format went through a change and started using the .VP3 extension.

hexdump -C Magic Flower.vp3 | head 00000000 25 76 73 6d 25 00 00 38 00 50 00 72 00 6f 00 64 |%vsm%..8.P.r.o.d| 00000010 00 75 00 63 00 65 00 64 00 20 00 62 00 79 00 20 |.u.c.e.d. .b.y. | 00000020 00 56 00 53 00 4d 00 20 00 53 00 6f 00 66 00 74 |.V.S.M. .S.o.f.t| 00000030 00 77 00 61 00 72 00 65 00 20 00 4c 00 74 00 64 |.w.a.r.e. .L.t.d| 00000040 00 02 00 00 00 0d 64 00 32 00 46 00 6c 00 6f 00 |......d.2.F.l.o.| 00000050 72 00 61 00 6c 00 3b 00 20 00 41 00 62 00 73 00 |r.a.l.;. .A.b.s.| 00000060 74 00 72 00 61 00 63 00 74 00 3b 00 20 00 46 00 |t.r.a.c.t.;. .F.| 00000070 61 00 73 00 68 00 69 00 6f 00 6e 00 00 7c 38 00 |a.s.h.i.o.n..|8.| 00000080 00 6d c4 ff ff 83 c8 ff ff 92 3c 00 00 06 0e 00 |.m........<.....| 00000090 01 0c 00 01 00 03 00 00 00 0d 10 00 00 00 00 00 |................|

The current version of the Premier+ software produces a file with the extension .VP4.

hexdump -C Magic Flower.vp4 | head 00000000 25 56 70 34 25 01 00 00 00 4d 73 61 0a df 74 29 |%Vp4%....Msa..t)| 00000010 3c 87 6b 44 2c 84 2f 00 3c 7c f7 e7 a0 69 6e 66 |<.kD,./.<|...inf| 00000020 6f 00 00 00 00 45 00 00 00 6e 74 74 6e 00 00 00 |o....E...nttn...| 00000030 00 27 00 00 00 02 00 6e 74 65 73 19 00 46 6c 6f |.'.....ntes..Flo| 00000040 72 61 6c 3b 20 41 62 73 74 72 61 63 74 3b 20 46 |ral; Abstract; F| 00000050 61 73 68 69 6f 6e 73 74 67 73 00 00 0c 06 00 00 |ashionstgs......| 00000060 01 00 00 00 01 00 c2 fe e7 fe 3e 01 19 01 00 00 |..........>.....| 00000070 73 62 64 73 00 00 00 00 ab 0c 00 00 01 00 73 62 |sbds..........sb| 00000080 64 6e 00 00 00 00 9d 0c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |dn..............| 00000090 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 6e 74 74 6e 00 |...........nttn.|

There is a great python library which can read in many of these formats and can give us some confirmation of the format headers. It is called pyembroidery and has readers for HUS and VP3.

One other format associated with the Husqvarna Viking Designer 1 model which used a floppy disk is the SHV stitch file. This is a special format which could only be used on the embroidery machine if it was properly formatted. This would put into a structure that would look like this:

The SHV file is the design file with the MHV and PHV are used for display on the embroidery machine. This is what we find when we look at the SHV content:

hexdump -C My Designs/MENU_01/DES01_01.SHV | head 00000000 45 6d 62 72 6f 69 64 65 72 79 20 64 69 73 6b 20 |Embroidery disk | 00000010 63 72 65 61 74 65 64 20 75 73 69 6e 67 20 73 6f |created using so| 00000020 66 74 77 61 72 65 20 6c 69 63 65 6e 73 65 64 20 |ftware licensed | 00000030 66 72 6f 6d 20 56 69 6b 69 6e 67 20 53 65 77 69 |from Viking Sewi| 00000040 6e 67 20 4d 61 63 68 69 6e 65 73 20 41 42 2c 20 |ng Machines AB, | 00000050 53 77 65 64 65 6e 08 55 6e 74 69 74 6c 65 64 8f |Sweden.Untitled.| 00000060 a0 47 50 62 7c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.GPb|...........| 00000070 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................| * 000000a0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 99 |................|

The MHV and PHV files have the same header so identification of just the SHV design file will be difficult.

I have only scratched the surface with these embroidery formats. The embroidery market was quite large with many different manufacturers. The user base seems to have been quite large, but its reach may be limited to personal collections. I have attempted a signature for the Husqvarna formats, you can find them in my GitHub repository. More to come hopefully!

Here, here (apt title), and short and sweet from Robert Paul Wolff (also an earlier personal recollection). Brian Leiter

...for the "cancel culture" kind. This appears to be real! Brian Leiter

Oy veh! (Thanks to David Velleman for the pointer.) Brian Leiter

And not for a social media brouhaha, but for a philosophical book on immortality (by Stephen Cave and John Martin Fischer)! Brian Leiter

What happens when Ulysses Owens Jr–a Jazz musician and jazz educator at Juilliard–hears Nirvana’s “In Bloom” for the first time (minus the drum parts), and then attempts to drum along? What is he listening for? How does he immediately craft an appropriate drum part? And how does it compare to Dave Grohl’s original? Watch above, and you can see how it unfolds…

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Thirteen years ago here on Open Culture, we first featured Rome Reborn 2.2, a digital 3D model of the ancient metropolis at the height of its glory in the fourth century. And that rebirth has continued apace ever since, and just last week bore the fruit of Rome Reborn 4.0, through which you can get a flying tour in the video above. Intercut with the computer-generated reconstructions is footage of the ruins of the very same parts of the city as they exist in Rome today. The opportunity for comparison thus provided allows us to appreciate not just the upgrades in the latest Rome Reborn’s level of detail, but also its degree of realism.

With each revision, the fourth-century Eternal City recreated in Rome Reborn looks more like reality and less like a video game. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get the same thrill of exploring it that you would from a video game, which is part of the appeal of loading up the latest version of the model on the virtual-reality app Yorescape, a product of the “virtual tourism” company Flyover Zone Productions founded by Rome Reborn’s project leader Bernard Frischer.

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And it is Frischer himself who leads the in-app tour of “sites exemplifying the city’s geography, markets, temples, and much, much more,” enriched by “Time Warps spread around the city that allow you to toggle between the view today and the view from the same vantage point in antiquity.”

This is heady stuff indeed for enthusiasts of ancient Rome, who will no doubt be eager to see for themselves the new and improved digital models of ancient Roman structures like the Circus Maximus, the Arch of Titus, the Porticus Liviae, and the Temple of Minerva. These and many others besides appear in the Rome Reborn 4.0 demo reel just above, which shows off the culmination of 27 years of work so far by Frischer and his team. A digital archaeologist at Indiana University, Professor Frischer has pointed out still-absent features to come, such as “avatars infused with AI” with whom the twenty-first-century tourist can interact. We’ll have to wait for future iterations to do so, but surely we can summon the patience by remembering that Rome isn’t reborn in a day.

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The Oldest Known Photographs of Rome (1841-1871)

High-Resolution Walking Tours of Italy’s Most Historic Places: The Colosseum, Pompeii, St. Peter’s Basilica & More

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

De minister-president opende zijn wekelijkse persconferentie op 10 maart 2023 met een excuus: “Goedemiddag. Ik heb hier twee weken geleden, dat was de dag dat het Groningen enquêterapport verscheen, een eerste reactie gegeven en de toon van die reactie was … Lees verder →

Telefoonhoesjesmaker Casetify zou de Teardown-skins van Dbrand en de bekende YouTube Zack Nelson (beter bekend als JerryRigEverything) van top tot teen hebben gestolen. Dat meldde DutchCowboys onlangs. De skins zijn met veel liefde en moeite gemaakt, dus de boosheid is goed te begrijpen. Maar mag het? Er is in ieder geval al een rechtszaak gestart.

Zack Nelson staat bekend als een ’teardown’ specialist: hij haalt elektronica uit elkaar en laat zien wat er precies in zit. Een samenwerking met hoesjesbedrijf Dbrand leverde dan ook een serie skins oftewel stickers op die precies vertonen wat er eigenlijk in die telefoon zit. Een knap staaltje werk om dat zo realistisch te doen: Dbrand has to carefully disassemble the devices it wants to make a Teardown design for, whether it’s an iPhone 15, iPhone 14, Google Pixel 8, MacBook Pro, or a Galaxy Z Flip 5. It then scans their internals using a commercial-grade machine and puts the image into editing software. There, it makes numerous tweaks, such as removing screws, ribbon cables, and wires, as well as shifting some of the components around to ensure the design fits on the back of the phone, laptop, or tablet before making the prints. Juridisch gezien is dat leuk en aardig maar het geeft je géén rechten op dat idee. Ideeën zijn immers vrij, dus als iemand anders ook zulke hoesjes of stickers met binnenwerk wil maken, dan is dat helemaal prima.

Casetify blijkt niet het idee over te nemen maar gewoon de foto gekopieerd te hebben. En niet alleen dat: men rommelde wat in de foto door elementen te verplaatsen, kennelijk om de kopieeractie te verhullen.

Duidelijke zaak, zou je zeggen. Alleen: een foto die een exacte replica wil zijn van het binnenwerk van een telefoon ligt auteursrechtelijk moeilijk. Auteursrecht krijg je op creatieve inbreng, en wie zo letterlijk en authentiek mogelijk de werkelijkheid vastlegt brengt geen creativiteit in. Zo’n rechttoe-rechtaanfoto is dus niet beschermd.

Nelson en Dbrand hebben daar wat trucjes voor toegepast: Dbrand spotted the many Easter eggs it planted within its own designs on Casetify’s Inside Out products. That includes the “R0807” tag, which alludes to Dbrand’s tagline as a brand run by robots, as well as the JerryRigEverything catchphrase “glass is glass and glass breaks.” Of “R0807” telt als creatief betwijfel ik, een naam of aanduiding is gewoonlijk geen auteursrechtelijk te beschermen element. Maar zo’n slogan, in combinatie met lettertype, positionering en dergelijke, lijkt me wel degelijk een beschermd element.

Casetify heeft niet gereageerd anders dan te bevestigen dat er een rechtszaak loopt.

Arnoud

Het bericht ?Casetify nept de hoesjes van Dbrand tot op het gênante af, mag dat? verscheen eerst op Ius Mentis.