A photographer wins ownership rights (copyright or IPR) over an image by producing a picture, in which he documents a certain place at a specific moment in time. Here it is interesting to distinguish the motif of place, or landscape, from a portrait, because, in the case of an image, the copyright claims for the portrait are not necessarily always on the side of the photographer, while, in the case of a landscape, the legal rights of the photographer are hardly questioned. The photographer affirms his perspective and his interpretation of an environment and creates an image of reality in the very moment, in which he has given this reality its visual shape (border, frame, angle, etc.). The act of taking a picture does, henceforth, to a place in the semiosphere what enclosure does to a territory in the real world. It is only a short step from the creation of a map to its instrumentalization, because each map is, at the same time, a manifestation and a prerogative. A current example for the instrumentalization of maps (and images) would be Google, the company that offers a free digital topographic maps service called Google Maps, in which the feature street view is integrated, a continuous photographic representation of all of a city's roads destined for car traffic. This has to be seen as a new type of enclosure - this time around, enclosure does not happen in the natural, biological habitat, but in the semiosphere. And this form of enclosure operates in all major cities of the world, no matter the country. In every Nation state, streets and squares or plazas are often a predominantly public realm, a territory not privately owned. Now, a vehicle of the private company Google drives around to photograph all the city's streets, and, as a side effect, it photographs all the buildings, regardless if they are publicly or privately owned, and all the people, who happen to be on the street at the time. All these elements alike become part of Google's street view. (If you own a building or something depicted on street view, you can order Google to blur it, but I am currently not aware of any nation state or city that has objected to Google's endeavor) The goal of Google is to "organize the world's information", but what they are doing is actually more than mere organization, it is mediatization, and thus a new form of enclosure - enclosure which nowadays takes place in the semiosphere. Google uses the photos in its own value chain, the images are the property of the company, Google takes care to protect these photos in economic terms, so there can be no doubt in relation to property rights. Google applies its own watermark. The photos are a source of income for the company as a digitized form of information. This leads to the question whether mediatization must be seen as an instrument to claim not only economic but also political power.
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AuthorThomas Behrens Visual Communication is not only taking part in the digital transformation - actively and passively - he will also reflect on it. Hence the blog. Archives
January 2021
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