I’ve been trying to find software for batch generation of thumbnails for JPEG2000 images. So far this is what I’ve looked at:
Kakadu is commercial software that looked hopeful at first, but the licensing is confusing. The description of the “Non-commercial, Named User Licence” says it “can only be purchased by individuals, Academic Institutions, not-for-profit organizations and libraries which do not gain financially by using this software,” but the license itself doesn’t say anything about licensing to institutions, only individuals. Our attempts to get a clarification have gotten no response. If they ignore us when we want to buy something, that doesn’t bode well for support.
OpenJPEG has its supporters, but it has a command line API which can’t create JPEG, GIF, or PNG, and it can’t create images of a specified size. There are C functions which may or may not be directly callable, but the documentation for them is really scanty.
ImageMagick didn’t seem appealing at first because of its command-line orientation, but it may be the best option. JMagick provides a JNI connection. The documentation indicates it can generate images of a specified size and format, which is what we need.
If anybody reading this has other suggestions, let me know.
Mad File Format Science 
Scalzi on DRM
Mostly it’s technogeeks like us who get passionate about file format issues—Word vs. Open Office, Latin-1 vs. Unicode, unrestricted PDF vs. PDF/A. But when issues like digital rights management (DRM) come in, a lot more people will weigh in. This week quite a lot of attention has come to the format in which John Scalzi’s new novel, Redshirts, was issued. Scalzi wrote in his blog:
However, some things went wrong. Several e-book sale sites issued Redshirts in DRM, against his express wishes. Tor and Macmillan quickly went after those sites, and most or all of them have either dropped the book or switched to offering it DRM-free.
In April Scalzi wrote: “As an author, I haven’t seen any particular advantage to DRM-laden eBooks; DRM hasn’t stopped my books from being out there on the dark side of the Internet. Meanwhile, the people who do spend money to support me and my writing have been penalized for playing by the rules.”
From the standpoint of preservation, the big problem with DRM e-books is that they will inevitably become unreadable in not too many years. Publishers will switch to new, incompatible DRM schemes or completely drop support for their older e-books. They can’t keep actively supporting old technology forever. I have no objection to it for enforcing limited access such as library loans, but if you buy a product with DRM, you’re really just leasing it for an unknown period of time.
I’ll be ordering the book shortly, and I’m waiting for the day when we can say of DRM in books for sale: “It’s dead, Jim.”
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