The venerable bOINGbOING innocently posted this story about some shuttle pictures being taken with the Nikon D2x mega camera. The story rapidly changed tone when somebody contacted the site pointing out the digital rights problems that D2x users are now facing regarding compatibility with PS. Nikon has encrypted the white balancing on the Raw NEF files, which prevents PS's Camera Raw utility from reading it without cracking the encryption, which would violate the DMCA. However, the encryption only effects the white balancing, so PS can read the image data but cannot apply the white balance settings associated with the shot, which means each image will have to be set manually. The problem is that every image has to have a white balance temperature. The PhotoShopNews site article (above) plays this down as a problem but it will be very frustrating for users. Its the equivalent of not knowing what kind of film you shot with and what filters you were using to compensate for the light. If it was film it would obviously be a pain, now that its digital, it might even be more of a pain. Consensus seems to run that this is a ploy for Nikon to sell more of its Nikon Capture software, which few people really use but is a good piece of software - the D70 comes with a 30 day trial, if I remember rightly - and it's pretty sophisticated. However, it's another $100 on top of a $5,000 camera body, which seems churlish of Nikon, and almost everybody will need to do some of the kind of editing that only Photoshop currently offers, and as it already comes with a Raw converter, few will bother - although if not crippled then its certainly been made less convenient to use by Nikon's small mindedness and absence of concern for its professional user base.