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Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

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Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#91

Post by amelius »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #84
School-Cotton wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This vaguely reminds me of the fact that in many countries, pure ethanol sold for industrial purposes is intentionally made poisonous, so you can’t drink it and thus merchants don’t have to charge the taxes on it that they would for spirits.

It's more like "so you can't drink it" without the taxes part. Those taxes play important role in reducing alcohol consumption (though they are of course not the only tool), so making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy rather than opens a loophole in taxation. E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/

Couldn't they just make it taste bad, for safety's sake?

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#92

Post by a-french-anon »

jjcob wrote: post #27

In case you are considering Nikon as an alternative, their Webcam Utility might be free, but it doesn't work on the latest version of macOS. There are 3rd party utilities (paid), but I had trouble with autofocus when I tried them. I wish camera manufacturers put half as much effort into usability as smartphone companies. Why does a camera need drivers to be recognized as a webcam at all? Why doesn't my 2000€ camera c…

> Why doesn't my 2000€ camera come with GPS and LTE built in?

2 seconds later on HN: why does my 2000€ camera spies on me? If you want a smartphone, use one, leave us be with our sane tools.

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#93

Post by calgoo »

rozenmd wrote: post #58
jjcob wrote: post #27

In case you are considering Nikon as an alternative, their Webcam Utility might be free, but it doesn't work on the latest version of macOS. There are 3rd party utilities (paid), but I had trouble with autofocus when I tried them. I wish camera manufacturers put half as much effort into usability as smartphone companies. Why does a camera need drivers to be recognized as a webcam at all? Why doesn't my 2000€ camera c…

I'm running my full frame Nikon DSLR as a webcam using a $15 USB to HDMI dongle - works great.

Same, i also got a "remote clicker" cable, and have modified the button to always stay pressed, so it does not switch off after MAX_TIME (camera model D3300)

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#94

Post by vasco »

c120 wrote: post #75
jorvi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a relic left over from a bygone era. Like the digital storage levy we still pay despite music and movie piracy only being rampant from 1990s-2000s :) I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

This levy is not meant for piracy, but for legal access - like copying the CDs you already bought to your phone. Compared to what we used to pay on blank media it's not so bad. If the alternative is that you are not allowed to keep private copies of anything...

I reject this view of the law completely at least in Portugal. The law was introduced to add a tax to every storage media one can purchase with the premise that a percentage of that storage media will be used for what they call piracy. This in effect means everyone is assumed to be breaking the law in advance and paying for it in advance.

As for your point about alternatives, if they add a tax on oxygen you breathe, will you also then say "it's not so bad if the alternative is you are not allowed to breathe at all"?

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#96

Post by alibarber »

amelius wrote: post #86
bayindirh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That requirement is reversed in the last five years IIRC. My Sony A7-III doesn't have that, for example. Neither modern Canons, AFAIK. The funnier thing is, you can't use the videos out of your camera for commercial purposes, because the video codecs inside your camera doesn't come with commercial licenses out of the box. So if you are going to use your camera for production which you'll earn money, you need to pay c…

That's fine, as long as I can record long movies with my iPhone.

But is it a phone that records movies or a movie recorder that can make phone calls?

[I jest, but these were almost literally the questions being asked by various commissions]

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#97

Post by fmbb »

jorvi wrote: post #66
alibarber wrote: post #20

I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously. The problem however wasn't Canon, but that I lived in a region (EU) that would have imposed a customs tariff on cameras that could do that, but by keeping it under that, the camera would be classed as a 'stills' camera and so was therefore exempt. Admittedly this is different from the case in the article - but it…

That sounds like a relic left over from a bygone era. Like the digital storage levy we still pay despite music and movie piracy only being rampant from 1990s-2000s :) I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

> I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

This issue does not appear weird.

There is some legally technical difference between a video camera and a still photo camera. Probably different tariffs or something. Not weird at all and it is not uncommon anywhere in the world for different classes och products to be classified differently, infallibly because of industry lobbyism to reduce their costs or to reduce their prices for their specific product.

The manufacturer chose to limit the product for the consumer for their own economic benefit. Nothing is stopping them from playing ball except their own profit motive.

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#98

Post by School-Cotton »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #84
School-Cotton wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This vaguely reminds me of the fact that in many countries, pure ethanol sold for industrial purposes is intentionally made poisonous, so you can’t drink it and thus merchants don’t have to charge the taxes on it that they would for spirits.

It's more like "so you can't drink it" without the taxes part. Those taxes play important role in reducing alcohol consumption (though they are of course not the only tool), so making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy rather than opens a loophole in taxation. E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/

I’m not sure how this is different from what I’m saying?

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#99

Post by School-Cotton »

amelius wrote: post #91
ivan_gammel wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like "so you can't drink it" without the taxes part. Those taxes play important role in reducing alcohol consumption (though they are of course not the only tool), so making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy rather than opens a loophole in taxation. E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/

Couldn't they just make it taste bad, for safety's sake?

In some countries that is allowed, but in others it has to actually be poisonous.

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#100

Post by ElectRabbit »

doix wrote: post #4

> However, Canon is a hardware company, not a software company, That probably makes it pretty easy to reverse engineer their software to bypass the restrictions.

CHDK back then had quiet a few people from Canon helping - as far as I remember the floor gossip.
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