http://web.archive.org/web/20010404005755/www.kris-sangani.com/

Kind regards,

Kris.

Digital images now mean that all I have to do is put the jpeg or tiff file into a right folder on the company server for the design department. Unfortunately, too often, the digital images that are supplied are not ideal for the print media. Most image suppliers know that Web based publications require a different resolution than print, but can you be 100 percent certain about concepts of and relationship between file size, image canvas size and resolution?

The file size refers to the size in bytes – whether it is a jpeg, tiff or other format. Occasionally, I get the misconception that the larger the file size, the higher the resolution the image actually will be. Many times I have had to explain to a PR contact that their image was not usable only for them to snap, “But it was two megabytes!”

Whereas the actual size of an image might give you some inkling of the resolution or canvas size, there are a number of other factors affecting the size of the file – such as the compression level of the file or the amount of information in the actual file (interleaved, colour range, etc). Thus file size is the most unreliable factor in determining an image’s suitability.

A more reliable determinant is resolution which refers to the actual pixel density - and is usually expressed as dots per inch (dpi). For print, 300 dpi works best; and for the Web, 72 dpi is preferred. Unfortunately, the concept of resolution is often confused with the canvas size.

The canvas size refers to the dimensions (expressed in centimetres or inches) that an image will appear when printed on paper or on a computer screen. Therefore, if you have an image whose canvas size is approximately A4, but whose resolution is 72 dpi (ideal for the Web), it will be blocky or fuzzy when printed on paper at this size. If the same image had a resolution of 300 dpi, there would be approximately four times the pixels to cover the same area (because 72 goes into 300 4.16 times). Thus the final printed image would appear much smoother.

Therefore, as well as ensuring that the image has a 300 dpi print resolution, make sure it has a decent canvas size. There is no use supplying an image which has a 300 dpi when the dimensions are about the size of a postage stamp - as designers will not be able to scale up.

How to check images

The good news is that you won’t need expensive photo manipulation software to check to see if the images you are planning to supply to press are suitable. Microsoft Windows Paint program provides a very simple way to check images.

Firstly, open the Paint application, click on properties and you will have a dialogue box as illustrated in screenshot 1. In this example, the image resolution is 72 dpi and the pixel size is 1024 by 683.

Screenshot 1

If we toggle the image units option in our example to display the size in inches, you will get a display like screenshot 2 which tells you that the image is 14.22 by 9.49 inches. But because the resolution is 72 dpi, it will be unsuitable to be printed at this scale. As mentioned earlier, you would have to divide the measurements by a factor of four to get the size it will reproduce in print.

screenshot 2

Now you will be the most popular public relations professional who deals with the print media.

Wall Street Journal has a pay wall

Predictions from futurologists way back in the early nineties about the World Wide Web suggested that the existing printing presses would probably be the last ones that the publishing industry would need to invest in. They rubbed their hands with exhilaration at the prospect of increasing their readership and revenues without having to increase their costs at the margin by printing extra editions in the future.

It seemed obvious. Readers were very much accustomed to going to their local newsagent and handing over cash to buy their daily newspaper. Surely, once the benefits of the Web was explained to these consumers, they would be more than happy to electronically transact to pay for information that would update more frequently and be just as qualitative.

But reality regularly disappoints. This is why many publications now have falling printed circulations and higher online readerships which have failed to generate the same revenue as print.

Since the dot com boom, consumers now expect all information for free. After dot com bust, many publications tried to introduce pay walls (paid subscription content). But they have failed because the barriers to entry have tumbled amid the onslaught of citizen journalists (and a few enterprising professional journalists) setting up their own blogs which they are able to put together for next to nothing.

Some, like this one, have very sophisticated open source content management systems (CMS) that mirror the sophistication of CMSs that often cost large publishing concerns hundreds of thousands of pounds to implement. How can an organisation, that send out dozens to thousands of payslips each month, compete with someone uploading to their blog whose entire infrastructure cost runs to less than a hundred pounds a year? Yes, the barriers to entry in this glamorous business have fallen that far.

The answer may lie in more creative online news pages. When a print publication is put together, an editor commissions (because that’s what he’s specialises in), a journalist writes (because that’s what he specialises in), a sub corrects (you get the picture) and a designer puts the page together - sometimes with the assistance of a picture editor.

In the online world, however, the IT department puts together a rigid template for every story which is left to a journalist to fill with very little leeway to be visually creative. This is why consumers are unwilling to pay for something that has the same design quality as a leaflet advertising a local church bring-and-buy sale. It doesn’t matter about the quality of the writing. Most web readers do not have the time to invest in finding out if something is worth reading if it doesn’t look like it’s worth reading.

It’s not just the editor and writer who are journalists. The sub-editor is a journalist - as is the designer, picture editor, photographer and even the stylist.  CMSs could match the flexibility that a software package such as Adobe’s Indesign offers publishers. But then they would be so complicated to use, you would have to hire someone to put up the stories - most probably someone who has the flare for design.

Can you imagine many publishers mirroring their print editorial operations to their online operations? Not when they were originally promised by the futurologists that they would get more revenue for less investment.

I’m not an entrepreneur, but I’m pretty certain that size of the potential reward is often related to the size of the potential risk. But it has already dawned on many organisations that moving operations to the Web is not a license to print money.

But creating something that communicates emotionally with the reader (something that printed magazines are good at) may one day compel these online readers to pay a subscription fee.

“We must ensure that such access is proportionate to the threat and highly regulated, and RIPA introduces, for the first time, strong statutory safeguards to govern this. For an action to be necessary in a democratic society it must pursue a legitimate policy aim, fulfil a pressing social need and above all be proportionate to that policy aim.

“As we implement the Act’’s provisions, we are working with communication services providers to ensure that they are enacted in partnership with them. Today’’s consultation reiterates our commitment to consult in this important area. We welcome comments on all aspects of this draft code from industry, law enforcement agencies and anyone else who has a view on its implementation.”

But in 2003 massive abuses of the new Act was feared, particularly as it was announced that there were plans to increase the number of organisations that could look at records of what people do online.

The UK Government unveiled a draft list of organisations that would be given the right to request information about the web, telephone and fax lives of British citizens under the controversial legislation.

Civil liberty campaigners had little faith that government safeguards would be effective in policing the use of sensitive information passed to organisations not connected with law enforcement.

Industry groups also warn that the technical and financial burden of complying with huge numbers of requests for information could cause problems for some firms.

Previously, under the RIP Act, only law enforcement organisations could ask for permission to look at logs of the sites people visit, who they are exchanging e-mail with and which telephone or fax numbers they call.

Only police forces, intelligence services, Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue could ask communication service providers for logs of what their customers are doing.

Now another 24 organisations, which included every local authority, obtained the power to request these logs.

Ian Brown, director of the Foundation for Information Policy Research (Fipr), said many of the organisations being handed these powers had little or no experience of handling such confidential information.

In an interview with the BBC he pointed out there was “massive scope for abuse” of personal information and would likely mean a huge increase in the number of requests.

Before now law enforcement organisations wanting to look at communication information had to get permission from a judge. By contrast the RIP Act allows organisations that want to look at this data to get permission from their own senior managers.

Although the Government had drawn up rules dictating how organisations should treat this sensitive communication information, the civil liberties campaigners questioned how seriously in practice these guidelines would be followed.

Clearly, questions were asked as to the quality of the guidance that organisations - such as the Department for the Environment or the Office of Fair Trading would receive.

Fipr also doubted that the government’s own watchdog, called the Interception Commissioner, would be able to police requests for the use of information about someone’s communication habits.

“The Interception Commissioner has been under-resourced for what they are supposed to do at the moment,” claimed Brown. “How they are supposed to oversee the use of these powers by these 20 plus government bodies is beyond me.”

The arguments over RIPA were not limited to the civil liberties lobby. The Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA), the Internet industry’s trade body also harboured its own worries about the extension of RIP Act powers to more organisations.

“It all amounts to high costs for the industry in terms of time and money,” said Nicholas Lansman at the time.

The government was also seeking to finalise a voluntary code of practice for ISPAs on storing e-mail and telephone data - this, despite the fact that the providers themselves had previously made it clear that they would reject such a code.

Such was the concern, legal opinion was sought by the UK’s information commissioner, Elizabeth France, who pointed out that although the code required providers to retain data for purposes of national security and anti-terrorism, in practice, police and government agencies with access to this data are able to easily take advantage of RIPA to mine it for other, more mundane purposes.

Under the legislation, any business with a significant e-commerce operation could find itself on the receiving end of an order demanding disclosure of data about its customers. Businesses would need to know how to respond - and to do this the legislation needed to be clear and unambiguous.

The waters were being muddied further by the fact that some government agencies were making use of a series of other existing laws to access Internet and phone details being retained as a result of RIPA. None of these laws required agencies to work according to the safeguards of RIPA codes of conduct or under the oversight of the Government’s own Interception Commission.

 In other words, a host of government bodies were enjoying free reign to access private data, thanks to a raft of overlapping laws and a lack of legislative clarity.  The confusion and consternation surrounding the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) showed no sign of abating.

In 2000, the UK Government published details of its plans to allow law enforcement agencies to access email correspondence. For the first time, UK police would be able to lawfully read your emails and listen in on your mobile phone conversations.

 The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill was positioned by the UK Government - then in its first term in Government and confident in its powers of spin - as nothing more than a move to treat new communications techniques the same way as conventional telephony. But from the start it attracted.

 The Financial Times published an article claiming that the Government wanted it on the statute books before the Human Rights Act came into force in October 2000. Even then critics of the surveillance bill were concerned that giving officials the power to demand access to encryption keys would open the door to a range of privacy abuse issues.

 While the attempt to crack down on the use of the Internet as a way of distributing offensive and illegal material (be it from racist organisations or paedophile rings) was supported by most people, there was concern that the proposed legislation would be used as a blunt instrument.

 Particularly as failure to hand over a text-only version of a suspected email or give the police access to the encryption key you are using could result in a two year prison sentence. Another area of concern was that the police would be able to grant their own warrants to use the proposed Act’s powers to put someone under surveillance.

 Opposition in The Lords

Whereas the passage of the bill was reasonably smooth, its scrutiny in the upper house was more detailed An alliance of more than 50 UK organisations called on the House of Lords to scrap the controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. The open letter was signed by a mixture of trades unions, consumer groups, businesses, medical bodies and human rights campaigners.

 These critics pointed out that the bill was badly drafted, too expensive for ISPs to implement, technologically obsolete, damaging to ecommerce and potentially breaking European Union human rights laws. These signatories include Amnesty International, The Manufacturing and Science Finance Union, Esther Dyson, Royal College of Nursing, National Union of Journalists, the Society of Editors, Privacy International and the Telecommunication Managers Association.

 ”We agree that the government has a duty to protect public safety, but the RIP Bill is neither an acceptable nor a responsible means of achieving this goal. We are deeply concerned that the bill will inhibit the development of the internet and ecommerce, while creating a range of onerous and unfair impositions on individuals, organisations and companies,” said the statement.

“The Bill substantially increases the power of law enforcement and security agencies, and yet provides wholly inadequate measures for authorisation and oversight. The ability of Government to demand decryption keys creates a dangerous precedent, which will affect the rights of all computer users. Surveillance of website visits will undermine confidence in the internet as a means of communication.”

 ”We urge the government to withdraw the Bill. Any subsequent legislation should, at the very least, provide stringent limitations and oversight to ensure that it does not violate the rights to liberty, fair trial, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and privacy.”

 Despite this opposition, the bill received royal ascent in October 2000.

 Mobile Phone Tracking

Essentially, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) future proofs itself to allow new forms of electronic communications to fall under the auspices of the legislation. But what this basically means that, as technologies are increasingly being woven into individual lives, more information about us are now available in the ether - thus increasing the amount of information that the police authorities could gather.

 For example, very few observers assumed that this law could potentially be used to track a person’s movement – which it definitely can – as the information is held by mobile phone companies with a minimum of accountability. In theory, a police superintendent would have the power to order the use of positioning technology to locate an individual using his or her mobile phone as a tracking device.

At this time, European phone technologies such as GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and 3G were just being introduced and would have position capabilities as standard for the first time. Initially, this technology was introduced as an important tool for the emergency services as well as companies wishing to make the most of mobile Internet through location-based services.

 ”It’s like putting an electronic tag on most of the population,” pointed out Caspar Bowden, then the head of government policy think-tank the Foundation for Information Policy Research.