Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:57:44 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121219/03142021435/victorias-secret-doesnt-want-to-be-associated-with-campaign-about-respecting-women-issues-takedown.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121219/03142021435/victorias-secret-doesnt-want-to-be-associated-with-campaign-about-respecting-women-issues-takedown.shtml taking down a parody campaign by an anti-rape organization, FORCE, called Pink Loves Consent. The campaign was a parody designed to raise awareness of these issues, by mocking Victoria's Secret's "PINK" line of clothing, that includes underwear that says things like "sure thing" and "unwrap me." The parody campaign replaced those with things like "ask first" and "respect." The page showed what Victoria's Secret could have done to put forth a more positive, more respectful message... and the company's response was to go straight to the hosting company and demand the site be taken down (which it was, though they found a new host who was willing to put it back up). Parody is a key element of free speech -- and issuing a takedown over this seems like a pretty clear attempt to stifle free speech. And, really, it just makes Victoria's Secret look really, really obnoxious. Were its lawyers really so offended by positive messages, rather than pure sexual objectification?

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]]> no-respect http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20121219/03142021435 Wed, 7 Dec 2011 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110826/01372215702/dailydirt-fixing-photos-fooling-folks.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110826/01372215702/dailydirt-fixing-photos-fooling-folks.shtml

Adobe presented a photo fixing feature that can almost magically un-blur digital images. That video could use some "enhance" capabilities for itself. [url]

Xerox labs has created software that can predict whether or not a photography will be aesthetically pleasing. Beauty is still in the eye of the beholder, but now there's an algorithm to help predict it. [url]

Virtual fashion models are about to replace human models in advertising. H&M has already started using completely computer-generated lingerie/swimsuit models on its website. Some people are complaining about being tricked by the fake people, but fake people aren't going away anytime soon. [url]

Maybe you can fool some of the people some of the time, but there's software that will point out photoshopped images. "It seems the scientific community is very aggressive about beautifying its images." [url]

To discover more interesting photography-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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