Slashdot Mirror
Photoshop Fails At Counterfeit Prevention
JediDan writes "Wired reports that the 'Anti-counterfeiting provisions in the latest version of Adobe Systems' flagship product have proven little more than a speed bump, but company representatives insist that including them was the right thing to do.' Kevin Connor, Adobe's director of product management for professional digital imaging said, 'As a market leader and a good corporate citizen, this just seems like the right thing to do.' Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable."
Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable.
Maybe they should just skip the product and go directly to printing the money.
"From Adobe's standpoint, all we're concerned about really is that it doesn't have a performance impact on customers, that it's stable and doesn't cause crashes and that it's not going to produce false positives -- that it's going to tell someone that a picture of someone's grandmother is a $20 bill," Connor said.
That's good, because there's nothing like having a top-of-the-line imaging program tell you that your grandmother looks like Andrew Jackson. Yikes!
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Let's all forget about counterfeiting, and concentrate on Photoshop's real purpose: pasting celebrities' heads on nude bodies.
Have you considered they might have been pushed?
I thought that was Humpty Dumpty....
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
great, another protection mechanism that's easily sidestepped by the real crooks but manages to irritate legitimate users
Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable
Please, stop making comments on what they should price their software until you take some rudimentary economics courses.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Hmm sounds just like software companies that are conned into spending boatloads of money on elaberate copy-protection schemes which are broken in days instead of hours.
The article says the counterfeit detection scheme was provided to them as a black-box piece of code. They didn't even develop it, and don't actually have any idea what it does or how it works! (Didn't a previous article include a fairly detailed explanation? Something about circles in the blue channel or something? Their solution? Request approved images directly from the government.
This flies in the face of science.
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Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Silly. There are thousands of possible reasons why someone might want to work with graphical images of banknotes other than counterfeiting. Blocking all those legal uses to prevent one illegal use is a violation of our rights.
This just in, the GIMP is providing an optional anti-counterfeiting plugin, for people who want it. Seems fair.
That's awesome...let me fire up my dot matrix printer and I'll be in the money in no time! Woo!
The anti-salmon
somewhat clever, but nothing too impressive. Import needed currency image from another program, even earlier versions of Photoshop, then use, save, print as usual, no more image checking is done.
Rather than blast Adobe for including this, a better idea in my opinion is to be somewhat grateful that there's no constant checking in place to waste CPU cycles, or slow down graphic developers everytime an image is saved or loaded.
Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable.
No kidding. And that only starts the downward spiral. Once your software is over a couple hundred dollars a lot of people who would like to pay for it can't afford it. Those people either use it without paying for it, or don't use it at all. Either way, they aren't paying, which leads to a further increase in cost to the remainder who are buying. And on and on...
I almost choke when I see the prices on some of the software bundles, especially Adobe.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I'm sure they weren't really trying to make it impossible to counterfeit, because it would make so many other image processing tasks more difficult, or at least increase the program's overhead. All they have to do is make a cursory effort to sort of say that they tried. Then again, I'm not too clear on the reasons for doing that either, maybe good PR? Still, it seems like it should be pretty readily apparent that this is an impossible task. They probably stopped all the fourteen year old kids counterfeiting perfect 20s, though.
-1, "1337" speak
No. The previous article was about Photoshop containing anti-counterfeiting measures. This article is about it being circumvented.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
"Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable"
They didn't spend any R&D time on the anti-counterfeiting aspect of Photoshop CS.
From the article - "The anti-counterfeit software in Photoshop CS was developed by the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group"
Also, their products are priced fairly for the power they have. Photoshop in particular is an invaluable tool, and it's easily possible to get back the money you've invested in it by using it to design many different types of media.
From the article: The inner workings of the counterfeit deterrence system are so secret that not even Adobe is privy to them. The Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group provides the software as a black box without revealing its precise inner workings, Connor said.
So Adobe just plugged in an OCX in their program or something similarly easy. It's not this "feature" that bloats the price tag, I'm afraid.
Also, why all this secrecy on the "inner workings" of the software, when it's so easily circumvented (e.g. copy and paste from another app)? Why should scanning money be illegal? It's ridiculous - it's like banning knives because they could be dangerous. It's not the technology, it's the use you make of it. I don't understand why politicians fail to understand this simple concept: technology is not evil or good, it does not pose new moral problems. It's always the same problems, just with a different twist in the details.
My Stack Overflow user
It was third party code, no? Thus it had little effect on their profit-making.
The fact that Adobe's products aren't affordable is yet another anti-counterfeiting feature. Users who can afford Photoshop have more money (and thus less need to counterfeit) than the general population.
The next version promises to be even less affordable, to the degree that no matter how rich you are, you'll have to counterfeit money just to buy it--thus ensuring that you don't use it to make the counterfeits!
Took about a minute to foil them...
I am an amatuer photographer. Its really funny how just about EVERYONE I know who is into photography has a copy of photoshop. Hmmm... They can't afford a new $500 flash, but they can afford $500 for Photoshop.
Its obvious to me the Photoshop is way, way overpriced. Now, Adobe is free to charge whatever they want for it, but the average Joe is not willing to dump $500 on software.
True, counterfeiting software is not a "right", but its bound to happen when companies overcharge. Why do you think people are so quick to download music and copy CDs?
[FromTheMorning]
The poster just didn't RTFA
"The anti-counterfeit software in Photoshop CS was developed by the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group, an organization established by the governors of the G-10 central banks to promote the use of anti-counterfeit devices in the computer industry....The inner workings of the counterfeit deterrence system are so secret that not even Adobe is privy to them. The Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group provides the software as a black box without revealing its precise inner workings, Connor said."
Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable
First off, every company spends time/money for R&D on features or products that never even reach the consumer, let alone generate a profit. Any company that hasn't done so would take over the entire planet in a short amount of time.
Secondly, Photoshop has been expensive for the last decade. Do you really think they sat down 10 years ago and budgetted 50 million dollars to add an anti-counterfeitting feature? You charge what the market can bear. And the market has been able to bear a $700 price tag (or whatever they're charging). As proof of this, I submit the fact that Adobe is still in business.
It's fine to whine about MS charging $XXX for products that aren't anywhere near the best tool for any job, but Photoshop is an incredible tool and worth every penny.
When the counterfeit deterrence system detects an attempt to access a currency image, it aborts the operation, displays a warning message and directs the user to a website with information on international counterfeiting laws.
That sure beats a Goatse redirect.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
"Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable."
I'm sure they are just printing their own money anyway.
Does it only detect features on American currency? I would much prefer to bootleg money from a country that wouldn't hunt me down with a "Secret Service", if I were a criminal.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Never assume that a device, law, or drug does exactly what it's supposed to do, and nothing else.
How comfortable would you be using a "counterfeit deterrence system" that you had no idea how it works. Makes you wonder if it also has the capability to "phone home" when someone tries to make anything remotely resembling a banknote, or whether there are back doors.
This is short and to the point, but exactly right.
Adobe doesn't need to integrate 100% effective technology to prevent the duplication of currency. What they were trying to do was put in a nice little token positive to throw around if they ever got caught in a legal battle with Uncle Sam, if he ever said Adobe made it too easy to copy the currency effectively.
It's amazing what sort of stakeholder gain you get from adding in just a nice little tidbit feature like this. It looks good to Joe user, and since obviously it's being covered in the news, you get free advertisement for how "friendly and responsible" the software is. Marketing and Social genius, if you ask me.
This 'feature' is already trespassed! Take a look in this forum (Dutch, sorry). It says there that when you scan multiple bills you won't get an error, and even when you crop them one-by-one, you're still not stopped in your job. Screenshots available.
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
Does that mean software like the GIMP is illegal?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Then obviously you are not in their target market.
Anyone who believes this must also believe that Microsoft is trying hard to lower costs but just can't do it. Face it, this software reflects what they think the market will bear, not what it costs to develop. A few years ago when Photoshop 5.x was out, they also had a "Lite" version that cost about half as much as full Photoshop. Thing was, you could also get the exact same licensed software free with a $100 Maxtor hard drive. Anyone who paid the full price for the "Lite" version was a real chump, but I'm sure there were plenty who did, and thought they were saving money after seeing the cost of the "Full" version.
Also, several years ago I had a friend who bought a scanner that came with a bundeled and fully licensed copy of the full version of Photoshop (NOT the "Lite" version). At the time scanners were expensive, but he still paid about half of what it would have cost to buy just Photoshop for a good scanner and a Full, legal, upgradeable Photoshop. (he got the Kai with it too!)
They could spend 1/10 of what they now spend on R&D, but they are not going to drop the product price by a penny while they think they can still get current prices. On the other hand, if you shop around you can sometimes get it at a much fairer price.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I think the point is that including anti-counterfitting measures in a product that is designed ostensibly to touch up photo's is both ridiculous and inappropriate.
:)
Counterfeiting is specifically illegal, and is Not Our Right Anywhere, I did not see any suggestion or insinuation that it ought to be. However, having to pay a "big brother tax" for ill-conceived or impossible to implement "crime prevention" features is an idea that many find offensive.
On the other hand, while almost everyone I know uses photoshop, almost no one I know has actually paid for it, or could afford it. Obviously their crime prevention abilities are somewhat limited
but it's not like you can go to Best Buy, pick up a scanner on sale, and start counterfeiting money.
I want to BestBuy last week, and sure enough, right there next to those little photograph printers, was an illegal currency printer. The side of the box said,:
HP Illegal Currency Printer (USB)
Plug and Play technology
System Requirements:
Pentium II 200 MHz or better
128 MBytes Ram
Windows 98/NT/2000/XP
Note: Does not work with Adobe Photoshop CS
Don't forget HP Bank Note Paper and Ink Cartridges (HP-ICP-701).
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
"...U.S. law, which allows color reproductions of U.S. bank notes so long as the reproductions are smaller than 75 percent or larger than 150 percent of actual size. The reproduction must be one-sided, and all materials, including graphic files that were used to make the reproduction, must be destroyed afterward. "
I used to work on Television Commercials and the Ad Agencies would all go nuts over those rules anytime we did a commercial that showed ANY US Currency (think Lottery Commercials...)
Fairly Realistic "Fake" Money Exists that can be used for showing huge piles of Cash and it's handy when you do need to have the appearance of money blowing around all over the place.
But sometimes the job entailed filming a SINGLE US banknote and the Ad Agency would insist we use "Fake" money because they did not want to get in trouble with the Treasury dept. Never mind that the image was going to appear on a TV screen, it existed on 35mm film before going to videotape.
What really pissed me off one day was when -on set- the Art Director was complaining that the "Fake"Money we were using did not look "real" enough. *sigh*
The "fake" money we were using was as real as the US Treasury allowed. There is a printing company in California that comes up with this stuff for the Film Biz and they had been through many generations of "fake" styles. Each generation looked better than the previous one.
Apparently one of their "styles" of "fake" bills went too far and the US Treasury confiscated the printed bills AND the plates used to print them.
I've made a bunch of "REAL" money over the years in overtime and other things thanks to the Ad Agencies confusion over the interpretation of this law.
I like microcars
The anti-counterfeiting part of the application was not developed by Adobe.
...
From the article:
The anti-counterfeit software in Photoshop CS was developed by the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group, an organization established by the governors of the G-10 central banks to promote the use of anti-counterfeit devices in the computer industry.
The inner workings of the counterfeit deterrence system are so secret that not even Adobe is privy to them. The Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group provides the software as a black box without revealing its precise inner workings, Connor said.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Can a person now use Photoshop as a QA test on how good their fake bills are?
If Photoshop accepts an scan of a fake bill, it is not a good fake. If Photoshop doesn't, it is. Just a thought.
John
I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it. jya.com/ap.htm
Try making a damn $20 bill that doesn't look like Disney money, and maybe it'll be more difficult to counterfeit.
Seriously, the US was like, one of the last countries to finally put watermarks in their bills. Even Turkey had watermarks before we did. Turkey!
Of course, their money is made out of crappier fibers; it doesn't hold up nearly as well as a US bill. From some people who are world travellers, I'm told the people in other countries don't even bother spot-checking a bill to see if it's genuine. They feel it with their hands. Apparently, tt's pretty easy to distinguish the real paper from the fake.
So, ultimately, I think that intricate designs are no longer going to stop counterfeiters. What's going to work is making the composite materials more difficult to mimic. What I think they should do, and I think this would probably work, is to weave the fibers so that there is contrast built into the paper weave itself which spells out the denomination: twenty, ten, etc. All you'd have to do is look at it from an angle or hold it to the light to see the weave. That would make it much, much more difficult to counterfeit.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Taken to extremes, will Adobe build in Child Pornography checking? Or scan your hard drives for incriminating pictures or files? Where does it end? And why is something I buy for editing images checking and deciding what I can do with the files I create?
At least, this could open Adobe up to legal problems - if their checks fail and someone is 'allowed' to do what should have been 'prevented'.
All in all, it sucks. If I wanted a counterfeit currency checker, I'd buy a 4.95 felt tip pen.
Because that 'copy protection' is implemented by script on the Web Page - it's not an IE feature. Scripts can catch mouse events, but (rightfully so) have no control over browser menus.
Adobe doesn't even know how it works (it is a black box), not to mention having wasted any effort on it.
Lasers Controlled Games!
What gripes me and frightens me about technical means of enforcing legal requirements is that they are ALWAYS wrong. They always overreach in the direction of whatever large interest asked to have them put in. As the article makes clear, "Adobe is actually exceeding the requirements of U.S. law, which allows color reproductions of U.S. bank notes so long as the reproductions are smaller than 75 percent or larger than 150 percent of actual size."
There are probably other rights, as well. If, for satirical purposes, I want to produce an altered image of $20 bill with a portrait of George Bush or Bart Simpson or my grandmother on it, I believe that is legal. As long as the final product isn't a counterfeit, the fact that there may be intermediate images in RAM that would be counterfeits if printed shouldn't matter.
Similarly, DRM systems don't check to see whether what you want to do is fair use, whether the supposedly copyrighted material is actually in the public domain, etc.
No, these systems are always quick, dirty, and one-sided. And it's always "prior restraint." The software stops you from exercising what may well be your legal rights without due process, without imposing any burden of proof on the entity on whose behalf it is acting, without any appeal (other than returning the software for a refund)...
There is no way to accurately map the complexity of the legal system, which is designed for processing by human brains, into a software specification, for a program to be executed by a computer. All attempts to do so are injurious to the rights of one party or the other. Oddly enough, the injured party always seems to be the consumer.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This feature was asked for by the US government. Adobe is probably being reimbursed by the goverment and in return, Adobe promises to include this feature. In otherwords, it would probably make the product less expensive to produce.
The Television Wiki
Between 1995 and 2002, the proportion of counterfeit bills that were digitally created grew from 1 percent to 40 percent
Correction: The proportion of counterfeit bills detected grew. I'm guessing that digital copies aren't as good as what the professionals use, and they're more easily detected -- the well made bills stay in circulation. Here's a cool pdf from the GAO that illustrates many types of counterfeits, including the superdollar.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Yeah cause hi-rag(no not exact obviously) content paper isn't available at staples, and the 16 year old at the window at McDonalds can tell the difference, or even cares. How many times does the street vender look at your $10 bill when you buy a dirt water dog or a pretzel... He shoves the money in his apron, and reaches (usually with the same hand) for your food.
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
I'd really like to see a company create something like a "DRM Helmet". If you've ever seen "The man in the iron mask" you can get an idea of what I'm talking about.
These helmets would be organic, and grow as a human grows. They would be locked on the human head at birth, and use a digital rights infrastructure to determine whether the human has the right to breath, view the sky, drink water, eat food, etc.
For the period from birth into the early teens, a human would be allowed substantial freedoms, such as drinking water, eating food, viewing the sky...all for little or no cost.
The parents of a child could pay into a corporate account to allow their child access to better food or water, or travel to pristine "corporate reservations" where magnificent views and vistas are sold to the wealthy. This provides an incentive to parents to support and enhance the corporate model--keeping your manager happy would result in an improved existence for your children. For example, parents looked upon favorably by the corporate oligarchy might be allowed into a lottery, the winners of which would have their children's viewing rights upgraded to higher quality textbooks and their access improved such that they can use higher quality software and tutorials.
After a human reaches their teens, the rights to quality food and water would be erroded...unless they find a way to increase the wealth of the corporate entities. Increasing the wealth of shareholders or board executives substantially would allow the human access to higher quality food and water, and the right to (for example) go to a museum and view artwork, or attend a concert and hear undistorted music.
The top tier of humans contributing to corporate wealth, say the top 1% of the population, could actually enter a lottery in which their family could travel to a national park and be released from their helmets entirely for the span of a week or so.
This plan would greatly improve the living wages of corporate board members and shareholders. It would also insure that only those persons who have earned the right to see the sky, or eat quality food, and view historical or IP restricted items of interest are allowed to do so.
Another bonus is population control and criminal punishment. The lowest economic performers could be denied access to reproductive rights--for example, a "DRM Chastity Belt". This would prevent them from spreading the "laziness gene". The belt could also have a mechanism to apply electrical shocks to the wearer--this would allow punishment for minor offenses, such as offending a corporate shareholder.
Major offenders, such as those who critisize or or satirize the corporate oligarchy, would have their access to food/water/air cut off for a period, at least until their life signs dwindled to some extent. Repeat offenders could have their access cut off permanently. Such a model relieves the oligarchy from having to provide for prisons, gas chambers and other useless expenses.
This type of infrastructure would slowly but surely improve the lives of the upper tier oligarchy, while culling the poorest economic performers in the population. Over time, one would expect the highest tier to have their quality of life enhanced at a near exponential rate, while lowest economic performers (and their descendants) would be removed from the gene pool entirely.
Development effort for protection scheme: $150,000
Cost in added crypo components (100,000 units): $1.2 Million
Look on CEO's face when some kid in Sweden breaks the copy protection 12 hours before the product is officially released: Priceless
There are some things money can't buy, for everything else there are gullable shareholders.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Software (and to a lesser extent, hardware) prices are based on percieved value. When Microsoft charges $400 for Office, do you really believe that R&D cost them $350 for every copy? The upfront cost was in the tens of millions, but the cost to print the CD, box and manual is right around $5. Does that mean that we should be paying $10 for office? After all, a 50% profit margin is pretty good, right?
Adobe doesn't charge $650 for PS-CS because their costs are high. They charge that much because that's what the market will bear. That's what it seems to be worth.
-- Hamster
I suspect that the bill detection uses the color histogram of the image along with the aspect ratio, such a technique would have few false positive and be fairly accurate for detecting money
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Maybe if they didn't spend R&D time and money on useless features, their products would be more affordable
Ha! I doubt Adobe is spending much money on Photoshop R&D. The program is finished, basically. The only features they've been adding for the last little while - text on a path, layer sets, layer sets within layer sets, scaling layer effects - are all features that have been obvious for many versions and that users have been screaming for.
All Adobe is doing now is slowly adding obvious features that should have been there many versions ago. Some, like non-square pixels, seem particularly glaring but others, such as text on a path, are more underhanded.
And if you think this is a new trend, think of the hundred layer limit. The only reason the limit ever existed was to increase sales of the next version. So lame.
I mentioned this in the previous article, but how about currency listings? Maybe I want to print out which currencies belong to specific countries. Maybe I want my employees to know what a real (insert X denomination) bill looks like.
Both are not as uncommon as one might think, and perfectly legitimate uses.
Any measure which blocks a vast array of legitimate uses in order to hamper a small group performing illigitimate use it stupid. How many times will we pay for somebody else's money-copying/piracy/etc/etc
On the other hand, while almost everyone I know uses photoshop, almost no one I know has actually paid for it, or could afford it. Obviously their crime prevention abilities are somewhat limited :)
Do you think Adobe really cares? You download Photoshop at home and learn how to use it. You go in to work, and your company gets some new task which requires image editing. What are you going to tell your boss to buy?
Also, for the most part, an illegal copy of Photoshop usually does not mean one less copy of Photoshop sold, but rather one less copy sold of Paint Shop or something else in that price range. That helps Adobe's market share figures.
Does CS stand for Counterfeit Stopper? Customer Scalper? What? What's wrong with numbers all of the sudden? Software is priced like cars so we should start naming them like cars? What?
I've been using Photoshop since version 2.5 (And actually started paying for it by version 4. Those present who seem to feel 600 dollars is a reasonable price for software need their head examined. It doesn't matter if it makes economic sense to the company...it makes no sense to the end user. It used to be that a graphic designer needed a ruler, an exacto knife and some whiteout to make a living. Now he needs several thousand dollars worth of equipment and software. That's not progress, that's larceny. But I digress... ) and I must say that PS CS is the most disappointing upgrade I have seen. All your money buys you is a bunch of DRM stuff and one or two token tweaks. PC users even have to deal with remote activation. Skip this upgrade if you can.
While I am ranting about PS upgrades, WTF is up with the line tool? It used to be to draw a line was a one step process. After several upgrades worth of improvements, it is now a three or four step process.
If ever-evolving file formats and OS's weren't such an issue, I think I would still be perfectly happy with Photoshop 4.
BTW, bonus points to anyone who knows what company originally wrote Photoshop...
"Adobe Photoshop CS: $649.00, $0.00 after rebate"
"Print your own US$649.00 rebate in CASH on the included currency paper sheets."
For whom? The $ dependency reaches from the US Government into the taxpayer wallet.
IOW, maybe we should all buy the rest of the product, as we're already subsidizing it anyway.
I guess I could warm to the nannyism, if it actually prevented lawbreaking.
I have no way of knowing, but I Guess the Illegitimate Might Procure something else for their dark deeds.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If you need an image of a banknote your central bank is required to provide you with an appropriate image. You just need to ask.
It seems that banknotes are quite frequently used as graphical elements in advertisments etc. Since Photoshop seems to target the professional market I can see how that would be annoying for said professionals.
Hmmm - but do you think the right time to complain about things like that, is when they already made their way into the law? It seems it might be more effective to make your concerns known earlier than that.
Plugins are considered a stand alone program, and as long as you distubute it as a plugin without distrubitng Gimp you can release a closed source plugin, and you can charge what you like for it, much as macromedia has released a closed source flash plugin for Mozilla (that I don't use)
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Lots of artist use images of money, legally, in creation of their artwork. Therefore fighting counterfitting is a way to keep them from being able to do their job. You think that average graphics artist has the time to wait for a 2-3 week response for an image they can use when putting together something? Get real. It is legal to scan and use money in the US. It is illegal to print it in a form that looks like real money and if within 75% to 150% of real size. It is not illegal to print a piece of artwork that incorporates an image of money as part of the composition.
It seems like, from the backlash and speed problems of Photoshop CS, Photoshop 7 will be around for quite a while to come.
The answer to this wonderful question is knowable through the simple process of "Ancedotal Induction."
At some point during the development of the mentioned version of the application, someone in product management induced a design constraint along the lines of "don't enable counterfeiters." None of the other product managment types cared because "we'll get that for free from the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group."
Product managmeent gave this new design constraint to a behind-schedule-implementation-manager. This poor guy said "sure", because, well... they're paid to agree with product managment. Especially since it was something "we'll get for free from the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group."
So the behind-schedule-implementation-manager went to the engineering team and said "we need to add counterfeit deterrence, give me the schedule impact, but I've already decided it shouldn't take _any_ time at all, because we'll get it for free from the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group."
The engineers decided immediately that actual counterfeit deterrence would require software slightly more capable than the average bartender, and that there was no good place in the image processing design to hook in something like that anyway. However, since it wasn't their code that'd take the blame when it didn't work... who cares. They told the implementation manager that it'd add as many hours to the schedule as they were currently behind and went back to work.
Eventually, the component (let's be realistic: an old version of a dll, and the wrong typelib, and a corrupted Word document claiming to be the "design document and manual) shows up in an engineer's inbox. He hacks it in on a branch to one part of the image import processing logic, fires up the build, and doesn't see it crash. It gets merged back to the main line immediately.
The last it was ever heard from before shipping was when someone from the test team called some friends over to "hey, look at this"--whereupon he showed them that you could get really good quality images of currency... but only if you used the "raw" settings from the twain image capture page.
Next stop
ssssh! It's called "money sharing". Money wants to be free!
I was wondering about the Swedish thing too. Maybe he's thinking about Jon Johansen, the DeCSS GUI designer; some people don't seem to know the difference between Sweden and Norway.
Lalala
This isn't copy protection... its little more than a way to say 'if they're doing it, they've already compromised our software, so its obvious that we have no liability in Sven's counterfeiting ring'
Seems like a good investment to me.
"Hmm sounds just like software companies that are conned into spending boatloads of money on elaberate copy-protection schemes which are broken in days instead of hours."
I wouldn't call this 'copy protection' in the sense that you're describing it. Adobe's trying to keep their ass out of the fire. If Photoshop were suddenly used to do a great deal of counterfitting, Adobe can fire back and say "we made a good faith effort to let people know that it's illegal."
Frankly, I don't see how Adobe could have won this either way.
"Derp de derp."
Not only that.. I can never get those damn swedish kids to stay off my lawn!
Less expensive? After I bought an older version of Photoshop, it eventaully paid for itself. Now, with this copy protection, I wont get my money back.
Many government mints work with special versions of Photoshop and Illustrator that Adobe creates custom for their uses. It has features such as massive resolution handling capabilities, zoom functions up to 16,000% or 32,000% (as opposed to 1,200%), special color handling abilities (for color shifting inks, and such, to make it easier to work with these materials), and more. They get paid quite well for these versions and features, and so the addition of code co-developed by these banking institutions and governments with Adobe was not a financial decision, but a performance one. Once the performance penalties were solved, they included it. I'm sure Adobe knew it would be easily circumvented, but it makes life slightly more difficult for counterfeiters, and it satisfied the governments (who really aren't good at grasping anti-anything circumvention techniques).
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
I feel sorry for the programmers that worked on Photoshop because i can tell that the decision to implement counterfeit prevention was a management one and if it was me i would be very pissed off that some idiot had demanded that i taint my software with a stupid mechanism that hasnt a chance in hell of working properly. What did they think they would achieve? would criminals suddenly give up because the latest version of photoshop wouldnt let them open money? im no expert but im almost certain that the system wouldnt prevent even one single counterfeiter. To me it says that Adobe management hold a very arrogent view on their products, (well actually ive thought that since Dimitry Sklyarov and this and i just hope that the negative impact it has on the programs performance and price is bloody minimal.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
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In the context of protecting euro banknotes against counterfeiting the European Central Bank (ECB)invites manufacturers
based in the European Union (EU)and importers or
distributors of products capable of handling digital images
(hereinafter 'the industry ') to submit comments in connection
with the ECB's request to the Commission of the European
Communities to initiate legislation making it mandatory to
incorporate counterfeit deterrence technology into such
products.Such legislation would apply to products produced,
imported or distributed in the EU.Any individual,organisation
or group of organisations may submit comments.
The comment period closed December 19th, but it might still be worthwhile to send in comments if you're in the EU.I can certainly see many legitimate reasons. I've made novelty money before. They certainly wouldn't fool anyone (by design).
The problem with any technology with this is that it removes law from the realm of human decision and instead slavishly enforces a limited and unmovable interpretation of the law. The result is that a number of perfectly legal and ethical actions are rendered impossible. It is only defects in the software that allows it to be bypassed at all.
For every prohibition out there, there probably exists some unforseen exception. When those happen, we need to apply human judgement, not simple rulesets.
For most of us, this particular case won't be a serious problem. However, the more accepted this sort of thing becomes, the more likely each of us is to come across one or more cases where something like this turns the simple and legal into the impossible.
Even worse, eventually we will see this sort of thing used to end-run the constitution. With the DMCA, it can be argued that we have already seen a case of that.
They say it's not going to hurt performance, and I'd like to see this verified by comparing load times of large hi-res images (as used by graphics professionals every day) between previous photoshop versions and this new crippled version.
Even if such a test turns out to reveal whatever might arbitrarily be perceived as a 'reasonable' performance hit, it doesn't leave me overly inclined to upgrade (I am a licensed user of Photoshop 7.0.)
No matter how you bend it, such a black box is by any definition yet another a crippling feature, an abomination to productivity even if you never need to scan currency.
But what if you do? No law says you can't use currency texture for e.g. a finance related site. The mentioned two-week 'maybe' turnaround time on the written permission and dubious-quality sample set from the Bureau of Engraving is laughable for anyone in the graphics biz with deadlines measured in hours, not months.
While the black box spews a browser window [with a traceable referrer? someone post the URL please] and stops the load and does nothing more, you CAN evidently bypass the 'feature' without problem after this initial nuisance as described in the article. You just need to WORK a little more and your smooth graphics pipeline has suddenly become crippled and bent with a couple needless ninety-degree turns as bothersome as those in the Breezewood, PA I-70/I-78 interchange (but without the tacky motels).
So why is the black box even THERE? It's just ANOTHER performance retarding stopping block. Back in the day when Adobe first started bundling the annoying Digimarc watermark stuff with Photoshop, I was bristling over the substantial performance hit it had on everyday photoshop work. I DOWNGRADED to the previous version and stayed on that for several years.
Eventually the PCs increased in CPU muscle enough that it was no longer an 'issue' for me, and perhaps the digimarc stuff in the latter versions of photoshop was optimized, or whatever. All I'm saying is, THAT useless black box was there in the first place, so THIS is just another. Which one comes NEXT? Where does it END?
Will Photoshop, the good corporate patriot citizen, commission additional black boxes to detect things like:
- Drivers' licenses and passports
- All government-issued papers
- Corporate trademarks (with database of associated legal depts)
- Barcodes (cue:cat redux)
- Celebrities imagery of which subject to royalties
- Heads of state and top bureaucrats (to stem the fark.com floods of Dubya photoshops)
Gotta love feature creep. But no worry, soon as PCs clock 10 GHz, you will barely notice the extended load times.I agree with you completely. The problem is that the law enforcement agencies, politicians, and courts believe that it's a perfectly valid strategy to attack the people who make the tools instead of (or in addition to) the people who use them to break the law. It's often a result of laziness or greed, but it is happening with increasing frequency these days, and I don't see anyone in a position to fix it trying to do so.
The DMCA is just one case. Suits against firearms manufacturers, alcohol manufacturers, aircraft manufacturers and many others are another example. More and more laws are being passed to remove the need to prove that a bad act happened by making acts that often preceed that bad act illegal in their own right.
The latest example that comes to mind is this. The Virginia legislature is about to consider a bill that would make it illegal to have an open container of alcohol in the car while driving. It's already illegal to drive drunk. It's not illegal to be a passenger while drunk. So why can't the passengers drink while a sober guy drives without drinking? Because then the police/prosecutors would have to prove that the driver was drunk to convict him, and that's too much work. It's much easier for them to just prove that he could have had a drink whenever he wanted, so he must have done so.
So I can see why Adobe might want to protect themselves by adding this feature. I don't like it, but I understand their reasons. To prevent it in the future, we should fight the root causes, not the end effects.