Background: the original Lena picture comes from the Playboy Magazine, and the model doesn't want people to use it.
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/it-s-time-to-retire-...
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/it-s-time-to-retire-...
Meanwhile, from the people who actually bothered to talk to her[1]:
> In her view, the photograph is an immense accomplishment that just happened to take on a life of its own. “I’m really proud of that picture,” she said.
This whole situation reminds me of GitHub, Fuck Your Name Change[2]. People want to drum up outrage and don't care one bit about the people involved.
Is it really worth erasing a piece of computing history because of some kids virtue signaling about a picture that was taken before they were born?
[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/finding-lena-the-patron-saint-of...
[2]: https://mooseyanon.medium.com/github-f-ck-your-name-change-d...
Why is it that in the former, everyone says you're a horrible person who deserves to be cancelled if you ignore the subject's wishes to not use the picture, but in the latter, everyone says it's a great thing if you ignore the subject's wishes to not use the picture?
Real answer: because people have double, triple, multiple standards.
This is a trivial discussion, but that's your answer
Trump is an extremely controversial person who has stirred up no end of trouble and in addition he has directed more than his own fair share of bodyshaming towards others. It does not surprise me in the slightest that people are not willing to extend him the courtesy of not sharing a picture of him that he doesn't like.
I'm not in the business of using or distributing these pictures, so I am quite happy not using either. I'm just attempting to explain why people feel this way. I personally quite like the Ethically Sourced Lena, it made me smile :)
I can see why people do it. He’s the worst, it feels good to say negative things about him. And he also has a tendency to go for shallow physical descriptions of people as criticism. So it has the feeling of “turnabout is fair play.” But it is a failure to restrain lesser instincts.
So what you're saying is roughly "when you engage in petty slap-fights with Trump you kinda are playing to his strengths" - which is true.
Turnabout is fair play. If Trump doesn't want people to make fun of him for his physical qualities, he shouldn't do the same for others.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/trump-women-i...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/donald-trump-protest...
If on the other hand you think that special grounds deserve special rights then go ahead. I have an apartheid to sell you though.
It misses the point in that there is collateral damage for body shaming as well - if you mock trump's weight because he is a bad person, you're still implying "fat=bad" to every good fat person out there too.
So am I allowed to mock those liberals physical qualities now, since they mocked trump for mocking someone's physical qualities? If they don't want to be mocked they shouldn't do the same to others.
edit: apparently she changed her mind later
Rightly so too, it's an image of her, but, more importantly, that image is very difficult to compress efficiently and maintain acceptable quality. There are other images that could have been used, but, an image of her was used, and she enjoyed the celebrity from that until recently.
She is allowed, of course, to change her mind, much as the rest of the world is allowed to consider her past behavior when deciding how they respond to her changing her mind.
https://qntm.org/mmacevedo is a much more in-depth examination...
The whole 'controversy' is pure spin in an age when everything has to be controversial.
This is the problem. You're implying it's okay because she asked for it, when the unlicensed reproduction of Disney IP would be treated very differently.
But I have a hard time believing that there is anything morally wrong with using a cropped version of such picture for technical and scientific research... that's just looking for controversy where there is none.
From the picture's Wikipedia:
Lenna is so widely accepted in the image processing community that Forsén was a guest at the 50th annual Conference of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) in 1997.[18] In 2015, Lena Forsén was also guest of honor at the banquet of IEEE ICIP 2015.[19] After delivering a speech, she chaired the best paper award ceremony.
People change their minds and we should respect their wishes.
When you sign a contract that says "in return for a bunch of money, you agree that other people can use this picture of you", you shouldn't get to keep the money but change your mind about the picture.
None of the researchers using the image had permission to use it nor did the journals that published the papers.
Playboy did decide in the end to look the other way as it was good publicity.
I don't know what the copyright situation is, but assuming she doesn't hold that I don't know what the issue is.
Isn't it like trump objecting to images of his in court accompanying a news item?
She, like Trump, is entitled to her opinion. And sometimes people want to respect people's opinions, sometimes not.
It's not like this specific image has an inherent property that somehow makes it the superior test image.
If anything, it's not a great image; the standard scan is a bit washed out and doesn't have a full color range. (I can't speak to whether this is a characteristic of the scan, which is now from a very old scanner, or the original image, having never seen the original in print.) No one test image can capture everything an image algorithm might want to test, but more full use of available colors would probably still be advantageous.
Surely that fact that it is the standard test image makes it a superior image.
If there's a format that I can't reproduce, there's a good chance there's an image of Lena to compare against.
That said, this new "lennart" is hilarious and I would like to use it instead of the original one.
EDIT: here's a 2019 interview where she appears to pose with the same hat again : https://www.wired.com/story/finding-lena-the-patron-saint-of...
She can be proud of her work and not want it used where it makes other people uncomfortable.
From what I gather it's not because she's uncomfortable with it being used, it's because of controversy other people have drummed up:
> When I asked her if she had heard anything about the recent controversy around her image, she seemed alarmed at the thought that she could have a part in hurting or discouraging young women. I sent her some articles about the Lenna and later gave her a call to see what she made of them. The photo, she said, doesn’t show very much—just down to her shoulders—so it was hard for her to see what the big deal was.
https://www.wired.com/story/finding-lena-the-patron-saint-of...
Not that it really matters that much, it's a historical curiosity by now.
> Lena doesn’t harbor any resentment toward Sawchuk and his imitators for how they appropriated her image; the only note of regret she expressed was that she wasn’t better compensated. In her view, the photograph is an immense accomplishment that just happened to take on a life of its own. “I’m really proud of that picture,” she said.
Being proud of her work doesn't mean she thinks people should have to see it in their work.
[1] https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/11/19/gender-equality-ad-c...
The argument you have presented is analogous (like, right next door; they share a side-yard, their kids go to the same school, and they co-organize the neighborhood potluck) to the argument that you and I have no right to our data not being thrown in a big hopper to generate an AI that is designed to operate directly counter to our personal interests.
After all, if you didn't want thousands of websites hoovering up your information, transferring it to a central clearinghouse, and that clearinghouse building an AI to put you out of a job... You should never have logged onto those websites, right? Those TOS clearly said they could use your data for any purpose. The contract was quite clear (had we bothered to read it).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hide_the_Pain_Harold
I have no issue with user data being used to build ML models, although I don't agree with you about the close proximity between a model's photo being used for photo research and anyone's data being used for everything.
I had been planning to display it in a glass cabinet next to my Melitta teapot and Luxo jr lamp and ball. (and if anyone has a lead on a terracotta rabbit, please let me know ;)