Poll of the Day > Colors are now DLC

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/8/2/AAQwHjAAD1PC.png

If you use Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign, you now have to pay $15 per month to use Pantone colors, otherwise they will be automatically replaced with black in every file you open, even if it was created 20 years ago. This is on top of your Creative Cloud subscription.

https://kotaku.com/photoshop-pantone-color-plugin-adobe-creative-cloud-1849714742

I'm not entirely opposed to the concept of intellectual properly, but in situations like this it feels like the laws protecting it should have a few more limitations.

I suppose a single color shouldn't be protected but I think here it's a set of colors which does make some sense. that said, 'I already avoid Adobe software', except the reader, which I use begrudgingly.

No I would assume most people have no need for any of Adobe's software.

Judgmenl posted...

No I would assume most people have no need for any of Adobe's software.

Lots of people use Adobe Reader. At work it's a part of our standard software image. It's terrible. I don't use it at home because I bought Soda PDF as part of a Humble Bundle.

Once in a while I need a photoshop program so I just use GIMP because it's free. Paid software is kinda shit sometimes, yeah

I use Corel Paintshop Pro. It pops up every so often as a Humble Bundle along with Painter, VideoStudio Pro, and AfterShot. I think it was $30 last time.

the future is absolutely terrifying. (:

It's crazy they think they invented those colors. They may have invented a formula to recreate them but colors exist. They just are on the planet.

Jen0125 posted...

It's crazy they think they invented those colors. They may have invented a formula to recreate them but colors exist. They just are on the planet.

They'll start copyrighting space colors next.

Jen0125 posted...

It's crazy they think they invented those colors. They may have invented a formula to recreate them but colors exist. They just are on the planet.

not just colors, combinations of colors. it does make some sense to say that a particular color scheme can be trademarked or copyrighted (and the more colors in the color scheme the more it makes sense to claim). it wouldn't make sense to claim a single color but that's not what's happening (I think).

Sahuagin posted...

not just colors, combinations of colors. it does make some sense to say that a particular color scheme can be trademarked or copyrighted (and the more colors in the color scheme the more it makes sense to claim). it wouldn't make sense to claim a single color but that's not what's happening (I think).

from what i understand of what was posted they are charging for pantone COLORS not gradient combinations etc. i get that the formula to create the color might be proprietary but the colors exist in nature. it's not like we can just invent a new color. we just discover ways to recreate it using materials we already have.

stuff like this is why paint colors have different names even though they're the same shade. how can you copyright a shade? you can copyright or trademark a name of a shade or maybe the specific formula you used to recreate that shade but how can you claim you invented or created a literal naturally existing color?

My job makes extensive use of Reader so I don't have a choice in the matter. I jumped ship from Photoshop to GIMP when I got this computer 3 years ago though.

Humanity was a mistake.

Jen0125 posted...

charging for pantone COLORS not gradient combinations

it's colors that come from a color book. I don't mean gradient, although that would be even more justified and may actually be a part of this too. but for example if I come up with a color book of 25 particular colors that have mathematical relationships such that they work particularly good together in certain ways, that is something that is (I guess) justified to copyright. (I guess in other words, there's more to a collection of colors than just color. there's color relationships. and coming up with useful/pleasant color relationships is hard work that deserves to be protected.)

this is not an issue of a company claiming the rights to the color RGB(123, 200, 215) or something, which is how articles about it will be tempted to... paint the issue.

Sahuagin posted...

it's colors that come from a color book. I don't mean gradient, although that would be even more justified and may actually be a part of this too. but for example if I come up with a color book of 25 particular colors that have mathematical relationships such that they work particularly good together in certain ways, that is something that is (I guess) justified to copyright. (I guess in other words, there's more to a collection of colors than just color. there's color relationships. and coming up with useful/pleasant color relationships is hard work that deserves to be protected.)

this is not an issue of a company claiming the rights to the color RGB(123, 200, 215) or something, which is how articles about it will be tempted to... paint the issue.

Are you just talking about color stories? Like for example in a season of fashion there may be a popular color story that designers are adhering to?

I also don't believe that should be able to be cppywritten, trademarked or restricted for use.

Sahuagin posted...

this is not an issue of a company claiming the rights to the color RGB(123, 200, 215) or something, which is how articles about it will be tempted to... paint the issue.

That's certainly what it sounds like, though, if the colours in question are being replaced by black. There's potentially room to justify copyrighting a palette (though even that's a stretch), but by the sounds of things, every colour in that palette is just unavailable to use unless you pay for them.

adjl posted...

That's certainly what it sounds like, though, if the colours in question are being replaced by black. There's potentially room to justify copyrighting a palette (though even that's a stretch), but by the sounds of things, every colour in that palette is just unavailable to use unless you pay for them.

only if the color is directly linked to a copyrighted color book (ACB file?). it's not that the color itself is owned, it's that the image is linking to an owned color source. (not unlike linking to a copyrighted font or something).

Jen0125 posted...

Are you just talking about color stories? Like for example in a season of fashion there may be a popular color story that designers are adhering to?

I also don't believe that should be able to be cppywritten, trademarked or restricted for use.

sort of. a color scheme. but not just a color scheme, but one that has been written into a copyrighted file by a particular company, complete with a license for use, very similar to font files. it's not just a singular color*, and you can use any particular color independent of the color scheme, but if an image is linking to a copyrighted color book file (.ACB I think) that you don't have the license for, you can't use the colors from that color book file.

(* I suppose the issue would still exist for copyrighted color book files that happen to contain only a single color, but you could (I think) still use that color independent of the file.)

(this is very similar to fonts where we take for granted that we are communicating using particular fonts, but that is only possible because they have been provided to us within the operating system or software (chrome, etc.). if you write software in a particular O/S you get to use the O/S fonts, but for example with game programming, you are actually working somewhat beneath/apart-from the O/S and cannot use O/S fonts, and have to obtain licenses for any fonts you want to use, (or use royalty-free fonts, or make your own fonts, etc.))

Okay I get what you mean now. Thanks for explaining.

Isn't it just possible for Adobe to replace the specific palettes with generic unnamed shades and hues? Instead of making it black in perpetuity?

Sahuagin posted...

only if the color is directly linked to a copyrighted color book (ACB file?). it's not that the color itself is owned, it's that the image is linking to an owned color source. (not unlike linking to a copyrighted font or something).

So, rather than replacing everything with black in older files that reference the copyrighted sources, photoshop could have just replaced each offending colour with the corresponding generic RGB value?

captpackrat posted...

Lots of people use Adobe Reader. At work it's a part of our standard software image. It's terrible. I don't use it at home because I bought Soda PDF as part of a Humble Bundle.

Don't most people just use the PDF reader in their web browser?

Then again, I don't have a need to edit PDFs so just a reader is fine for me and Adobe is overkill in that sense. And if I do, I just "export to PDF" instead of printing whatever I am working on.

adjl posted...

So, rather than replacing everything with black in older files that reference the copyrighted sources, photoshop could have just replaced each offending colour with the corresponding generic RGB value?

no, because that would violate the copyright. (that's "plagiarism".) the point is that the collection of colors as a whole has value above just being colors. if you want your image to make use of the color collection that another company has come up with and requires a license for, then you need a license to use it.

for the font analogy, no you cannot just screen-shot the font's letters and make images out of them and use those images in your game, that is still violating copyright.

replacing with black is like replacing with some default font (like Courier New or something) when a font file copyright validation fails.

(note that this is all just my own limited understanding from what I've read thus far; I'm not an expert on this subject and I could be wrong about this.)

So we get back to "you're plagiarizing if you decide to use this combination of colours without a license so we're going to ruin your 20-year-old files unless you pay up," which is only marginally better than copyrighting the individual colours themselves.

I get the font analogy, but fonts are at least artwork: Each individual character is a picture that somebody has created. Coming up with a colour palette is an act of creativity, but the individual colours themselves exist regardless of what anyone does. Copyrighting pigments to provide those colours is fair game (unless your name is Anish Kapoor), but in the digital world, it's all just a matter of RGB values that require no proprietary technology to generate or interpret, so claiming any sort of ownership of that is just stupid.

adjl posted...

So we get back to "you're plagiarizing if you decide to use this combination of colours without a license so we're going to ruin your 20-year-old files unless you pay up."

if by "combination of colors" you specifically mean linking to a copyrighted color-book file, yes.

you can use those colors independently, just like you can write your own prose or make your own font independently. but you can't look into the file, extract the color information, and use that color scheme yourself based off the color file, that is "plagiarism". it's directly analogous to other forms of plagiarism.

(like, you can't copy code directly off of wikipedia for a programming assignment, even though implementing it yourself based on the knowledge you get from the article, you will end up with something that looks very very similar.)

(again, this is my limited understanding, etc.etc.)

adjl posted...

so claiming any sort of ownership of that is just stupid.

not sure it's "stupid". you shouldn't be able to, for example, use some random company's color scheme (down to the RGB values) for your own commercial purposes, like Pepsi's or Coca Cola's, etc (endless examples).

if I make a logo for my company using Coca Cola's RGB values, that's at least pretty sketchy if not blatantly infringement. (maybe there are better examples if Coca Cola has like 2 colors or something; the more colors are involved the more valid it becomes to be protected).

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/3/5/AAM4lZAAD1S_.jpg

Sahuagin posted...

not sure it's "stupid". you shouldn't be able to, for example, use some random company's color scheme (down to the RGB values) for your own commercial purposes, like Pepsi's or Coca Cola's, etc (endless examples).

if I make a logo for my company using Coca Cola's RGB values, that's at least pretty sketchy if not blatantly infringement. (maybe there are better examples if Coca Cola has like 2 colors or something; the more colors are involved the more valid it becomes to be protected).

coke doesn't copyright or own colors. an infringement can only happen if everything, including colors, pattern, font, etc. has great resemblance to another copyright or trademark.

a color by itself cant be copyrighted. for that matter, copyright is the right to put something on a medium, or a representation thereof. since a color can't be copyrighted, that means people are free to represent those colors in various methods (or encoding in this case.)

Pantone may own the copyright to a specific representation of colors. However as stated above, other people can legally represent the same colors using other methods or medium.

Amuseum posted...

coke doesn't copyright or own colors. an infringement can only happen if everything, including colors, pattern, font, etc. has great resemblance to another copyright or trademark.

I think if, for example, Pepsi had an ad or image, and that ad or image used some 10+ identical RGB colors as a common Coke image, that Coke would have grounds to complain. at some point it can no longer be accidental (unless there's another explanation how those particular colors were arrived at). if it's not strictly technically trademarkable/copyrightable, ok, I don't know.

Amuseum posted...

Pantone may own the copyright to a specific representation of colors. However as stated above, other people can legally represent the same colors using other methods or medium.

you can use whatever colors you want/happen to use, but it becomes morally grey if you happen to be using a set of 10-20 colors that match a copyrighted set exactly. (there are something like 1.7x10^72 sets of 10 24-bit colors, so you cannot accidentally use the same 10. though it might get tricky if there are obvious sets of 10 colors to generate, like 10 grey shades or something.)

I dont use any Adobe software.

I occasionally use GIMP for image manipulation, but I dont dabble in that often enough to justify a purchased software.

For PDFs, I use Foxit PDF software (free viewer version at home and the premium version PDF editor at work). At work (I am an electrician) I view blueprints and specifications and other documents (can sometimes be hundreds of pages), and use the software to insert comments. But some other people use Adobe, but I dont like the UI.

Yeah; I subscribe to the Photography plan. Photoshop, Lightroom, and a few other programs for $120/year.

Hey guys I just got off the phone with my lawyer and I own the color yellow now. If you want to use it it's $2.99 per month.

Only Acrobat Reader.

Zareth posted...

Hey guys I just got off the phone with my lawyer and I own the color yellow now. If you want to use it it's $2.99 per month.

Can I at least get an employee discount?

Sahuagin posted...

maybe there are better examples if Coca Cola has like 2 colors or something; the more colors are involved the more valid it becomes to be protected

Yeah, Coca-Cola's a bad example because their colour scheme is literally just red and white. If they start suing people for using that, they're going to be suing Canada, Switzerland, and Japan (perhaps not if the exact shade of red doesn't match, but this illustrates the point nicely).

The question, then, is how many colours have to be shared to count as infringement. I get that there's value in "I put together this palette of 47 colours that work well together to convey a certain theme," since there is a non-trivial amount of research and creativity that goes into generating those palettes and that work ought to be rewarded and not ripped off, but I don't know where the line should be drawn to avoid being overtly dystopian. Even then, though, where colours exist independently of what any artist does and it's so easy to arrive at similar colour palettes without even knowing that somebody else has come up with them before (and, realistically, somebody probably already has for just about any combination), I can't help but feel that that's going to be too broad a trademark to be reasonable.

That said, I can understand selling the convenience value of having the colours you want pre-arranged into a palette so you don't have to manually set them up. That's not copyrighting the colour scheme, it's just charging people for the convenience. To tie that to a subscription fee and break people's files if that fee lapses, however, is definitely scummy.

adjl posted...

their colour scheme is literally just red and white

it depends what you're looking at. some logos, like the circle with a picture of a bottle, have more like 8 colors, including some gradients.

and it's not actually "red and white", there are particular shades of red and white that they use. RGB(192, 47, 47) seems like a common one for red, but there is also RGB(227, 30, 37). (this is assuming what I get from an image search is accurate, which it very likely isn't.)

for white I see RGB(254, 254, 254) but also RGB(242, 242, 242).

the official canada flag red is, at least for logos I think, RGB(235, 45, 55) (the one for flags seems to be hidden in a standards document; according to wiki it is pure red (255, 0, 0). there are different ones for indoor/outdoor.)

interestingly wiki says something like that the "pure red" for the canada flag can be pulled from a Pantone "color specifier" as PMS 032 (flag red 100%) or PMS 485 (for screens).

adjl posted...

how many colours have to be shared to count as infringement

this would be for if we wanted to make it copyright infringement in general, which is not the original issue. I've only said it becomes less morally ok as it goes up. I have no idea where the line is actually drawn, if anywhere.

in the original situation, the answer is something like "any number of colors, even one, if they are contained within a copyrighted color book file". no license for file = colors from that file do not get loaded.

Pantone owns an index that associates a "name" to a color. that's it. Adobe used to license that index. But without that index file, those colors now appear as black. this should be the real issue, how Adobe is handling it. many creators fear the ruining of older works that were created under the old licenses.

Pantone's main use is creating dyes and paints that can be coated onto physical objects. The process to create a specific hue onto paint is nontrivial. Thus is easily traceable if a client wants to trademark a color. which the trademark of a color is only valid within a specific industry. that's the main infringement that's liable regarding Pantone color. in other words, you can register a color with Pantone as part of the process to protect your trademark.

nevertheless, you can freely use other indexes or colorspaces, such as RGB, CMYK, HTML hex, YUV, etc. even if they do overlap with Pantone's list of colors. in other words, Pantone doesn't own other ways to represent colors. in this case for digital images created by laymen, Pantone is moot. since we more commonly use binary indexes, like RGB, or HTML.

Sahuagin posted...

it depends what you're looking at. some logos, like the circle with a picture of a bottle, have more like 8 colors, including some gradients.

and it's not actually "red and white", there are particular shades of red and white that they use. RGB(192, 47, 47) seems like a common one for red, but there is also RGB(227, 30, 37). (this is assuming what I get from an image search is accurate, which it very likely isn't.)

for white I see RGB(254, 254, 254) but also RGB(242, 242, 242).

the official canada flag red is, at least for logos I think, RGB(235, 45, 55) (the one for flags seems to be hidden in a standards document; according to wiki it is pure red (255, 0, 0). there are different ones for indoor/outdoor.)

interestingly wiki says something like that the "pure red" for the canada flag can be pulled from a Pantone "color specifier" as PMS 032 (flag red 100%) or PMS 485 (for screens).

this would be for if we wanted to make it copyright infringement in general, which is not the original issue. I've only said it becomes less morally ok as it goes up. I have no idea where the line is actually drawn, if anywhere.

in the original situation, the answer is something like "any number of colors, even one, if they are contained within a copyrighted color book file". no license for file = colors from that file do not get loaded.

Say Coke's color is the second example could they sue you if you used 242,242,241?

funkyfritter posted...

I'm not entirely opposed to the concept of intellectual properly, but in situations like this it feels like the laws protecting it should have a few more limitations.

We live in a world where tattoo artists can sue to own the intellectual property of the art they drew on someone they tattooed.

Intellectual property law is already infinitely fucked.

Not to mention public domain will never be a thing again as long as Disney has lawyers

ParanoidObsessive posted...

We live in a world where tattoo artists can sue to own the intellectual property of the art they drew on someone they tattooed.

Intellectual property law is already infinitely fucked.

I think that's only if somebody uses that particular art without permission like from The Hangover.

Where is the option "No, I still pirate it?"

This got me thinking...how come we haven't monetized mathematical equations? Someone had to take an extensive amount of time to come up with them. But as far as I know, any scientist can use any equation for their own commercial purposes.

But to answer the original question, I still cling to my copy of Photoshop CS5 that I've had since college. Got the whole suite for a heavy discount. It's the only reason I'm afraid to upgrade to Windows 10 because I'm worried about compatibility issues.

VideoboysaysCube posted...

This got me thinking...how come we haven't monetized mathematical equations? Someone had to take an extensive amount of time to come up with them. But as far as I know, any scientist can use any equation for their own commercial purposes.

that's very similar to whether algorithms should be patentable; IMO and I think the majority consensus is that they shouldn't be, but it is debatable.

I think there isn't enough variation in algorithms and equations. if you want something to scale a certain way, you need a particular kind of equation. if you want to solve a particular problem, you need a particular kind of algorithm. these pieces need to be reusable by everyone, that's what makes the engineering possible in the first place.

even mechanical patents are kind of iffy, where the original intent is to get wide-spread work on creative solutions to problems. there is much more variation in mechanical solutions than for math/programming so it may make a bit more sense for them to be patented; but I still think it's iffy, and the patent office is IIRC notoriously behind schedule, just inundated with patent applications that will basically never get looked at.

Revelation34 posted...

I think that's only if somebody uses that particular art without permission like from The Hangover.

The point is more that you shouldn't need permission from a tattoo artist if you've literally gotten image rights from the person whose skin the tattoo is literally on. Or worse, ARE the person whose skin the tattoo is literally on.

It's becoming a more common thing with sports video games where tattoo artists are suing because athletes get scanned into video games. And those artists should basically be loaded into a very large rocket and fired directly into the sun.

They're not brilliant geniuses who need their intellectual property protected so they can profit from it in the future, they're fucking work-for-hire needle jockeys. At this point the ones who sue are basically just this side of patent trolls.



Zareth posted...

Not to mention public domain will never be a thing again as long as Disney has lawyers

Disney's sort of changing tactics because it's getting harder for them to prolong copyright forever. They're starting to lean more heavily into general rights ownership, locking down trademarks, and making the live-action remakes (which sort of "reset" various IP concepts) to essentially make it impossible to do anything with their intellectual property even if it does enter public domain.



Sahuagin posted...

that's very similar to whether algorithms should be patentable; IMO and I think the majority consensus is that they shouldn't be, but it is debatable.

Majority consensus rarely matters if someone with enough money can bribe enough lawmakers in enough influential jurisdictions.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The point is more that you shouldn't need permission from a tattoo artist if you've literally gotten image rights from the person whose skin the tattoo is literally on. Or worse, ARE the person whose skin the tattoo is literally on.

It's becoming a more common thing with sports video games where tattoo artists are suing because athletes get scanned into video games. And those artists should basically be loaded into a very large rocket and fired directly into the sun.

They're not brilliant geniuses who need their intellectual property protected so they can profit from it in the future, they're fucking work-for-hire needle jockeys. At this point the ones who sue are basically just this side of patent trolls.

Disney's sort of changing tactics because it's getting harder for them to prolong copyright forever. They're starting to lean more heavily into general rights ownership, locking down trademarks, and making the live-action remakes (which sort of "reset" various IP concepts) to essentially make it impossible to do anything with their intellectual property even if it does enter public domain.

Majority consensus rarely matters if someone with enough money can bribe enough lawmakers in enough influential jurisdictions.

Yeah then then those ones deserve absolutely nothing.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Disney's sort of changing tactics because it's getting harder for them to prolong copyright forever. They're starting to lean more heavily into general rights ownership, locking down trademarks, and making the live-action remakes (which sort of "reset" various IP concepts) to essentially make it impossible to do anything with their intellectual property even if it does enter public domain.

I will say that I'm generally fine with companies being able to indefinitely prolong the ownership of trademarks they're actually using. Disney shouldn't have to push to have laws rewritten to maintain control of their primary mascot character just because they've been using him for the better part of a century, and that approach makes things worse for everyone because it reduces the amount of art that ends up in public domain even after it's been abandoned. They should be able to continue to use their creations so long as they're actively doing so.

Personally, I think the limit should be ~10 years of disuse: If a given work, character, or other IP isn't made commercially available for more than 10 years, it should automatically pass into public domain. There was a time when that was an unreasonable standard because physically distributing art is expensive and stores only have so much space, but in a world of digital distribution there's literally no reason not to sell old media except to create artificial scarcity. While I'm sure this would result in a torrent (pun not intended) of half-assed ports and remakes to hold on to trademarks, as you pointed out with Disney's live-action remakes, and there'd probably be a need to define some sort of minimum availability period to avoid "We released 14 copies for sale that counts," I feel like that's still better than refusing to sell the material while also suing anyone that tries to pirate something that's literally impossible to obtain legitimately. It also eliminates the need to make half-assed remakes because they can just leave the original available for sale and never have to do anything more than that.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's becoming a more common thing with sports video games where tattoo artists are suing because athletes get scanned into video games. And those artists should basically be loaded into a very large rocket and fired directly into the sun.

On one hand, yes. On the other hand, I still like those artists better than EA, so I'm kind of confused around who to root for.