Nikon whipped RAW: Canon are you listening?

Recently there’s been quite a bit of hubbub about Nikon’s D2x camera, and it’s compatibility with Adobe’s Photoshop. While not normally a topic of general public interest, both the controversial (and ill-conceived) DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and DRM (Digital Rights Management) both surfaced as components of the discussion.

The background and timing of the story follow:

March 1st, 2005	Complaints (readers can log in as guests) regarding the Nikon D2x’s lack of documentation for the NEF (Nikon Electronic Format), and ACR’s (Adobe Camera Raw) subsequent inability to import NEF into Adobe Photoshop begin to appear on Adobe’s corporate hosted user-to-user forums.
April 14th, 2005	A Nikon representative sends a response and link (to a page Nikon has subsequently and mysteriously removed) to an Adobe forum member that complained to Nikon, outlining Nikon’s position regarding NEF, Capture (Nikon’s own image adjustment software), and Adobe Photoshop (the text of which is posted on the Adobe Forums). The page is particularly disparaging to Photoshop, stating: "Where does Photoshop come in? As graphic arts software, it's great for removing a telephone pole, or adding a drop shadow, or affixing a caption to your photo. But if you're using it to crop or straighten an image, or adjust contrast, brightness, saturation and curves, or to apply filters, you simply don't need it." This suggests to many that Nikon is purposely not releasing information and or support Adobe to boost the use and sales of its own product.
April 17th, 2005	Thomas Knoll, the original author of Photoshop, posts to the Adobe forums regarding ACR’s support for NEF, accusing Nikon of encrypting the white balance data, and states that due to conventions of DMCA (which makes it illegal to build   devices that circumvent encryption), Adobe would not take the legal risk of decrypting NEF’s white balance data without an indemnity from Nikon.
April 17th, 2005	A story about Thomas Knoll’s post and a link to it are posted on PhotoshopNews.com.
April 19th, 2005	The PhotoshopNews story is linked to by Slashdot, where the story generates heavy commentary.
April 20th, 2005	Nikon gets a positive mention in BoingBoing, with a link to photos taken of the space shuttle with its D2x camera. This is negated with an update to the developing story on PhotoshopNews and Slashdot. Controversy is also sparked by the idea that Nikon may be claiming some sort of ownership of the digital negative, because it is in a proprietary format.
April 22nd, 2005	Nikon issues a response to the controversy, here at Digital Photography Review. The repose is widely criticized as meaningless, ignorant, incomplete, and did I mention meaningless? It specifically tells developers to use Nikon’s SDK (Software Developer Kit), something Thomas Knoll addressed as early as March 1st as being insufficient (scroll down from the top to see his commentary).
April 22nd, 2005	The response is linked to on BoingBoing.
April 25th, 2005	OpenRAW group founded website launched to encourage and motivate  common Raw standard open documentation of Raw formats. A link and further background appears on BoingBoing.

One of the most interesting features of this story was how often Canon came up as an alternative, and how many people said either that they would purchase a Canon camera, or that they would do so if Canon were to adopt an open standard. An example of this sentiment can be found here on O’Reilly Radar. There’s a real opportunity here for Canon, if they’re listening.

To get conceptual, the information age has spawned the hyper-informed consumer, one who is increasingly tiring of limitations and restrictions placed on the products they buy (are you listening, RIAA? How about you Verizon?). Consumers will reward companies who recognize this, stop trying to spin faults and lock-in as features, and start concentrating on, shock, producing a better product.

Shout-out to BoingBoing, as an old fan of the zine and The Happy Mutant Handbook. Keep up the good work.

UPDATE: There have been requests for a more formal version of this write-up. A pdf of it can be found here.