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Currency Detection Discovered in More Products
netbsd_fan writes "BUGTRAQ is reporting that anti-counterfeiting spyware is being found in more and more products. What is also interesting is that these products block fair uses of currency images which do not break the law. What incentive do printer manufacturers have to treat their customers like criminals? Is this a precursor to DRM in scanners, CD drives, and output devices?"
It's actually just a test for the true roll-out, which will prevent the reproduction and distribution of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
what happens when the note design changes?
What is also interesting is that these products block fair uses of currency images which do not break the law.
Just like most machines, they will minimise the chance of taking a fake rather than maximising not refecting a non-fake. They probably have some kind of level of statistical signigicance of 'error' they are happy with. New tech is not fool-proof tech.
And I came up with this obviously acedemic images of the Euro. I'm sure that no matter what is put into place by the creators of the drivers, there will always be a way around them.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
Is this software/hardware reporting back to someone that you're trying to duplicate currency? I doubt it, so it's likely not spyware. The incentive they have is simply to help the government fight counterfeit currency. Do you want your goods to be purchased with fake money? I don't.
unlike the hypocritical open sores hippies here, some people actually voluntarily do things to keep people from doing bad stuff. I know around here, it is expected that free speech means anything from pictures of kiddie porn to rape stories, in fact it means anything except saying you like President Bush or Microsoft I think. But some people actually voluntarily try to prevent their products from being misused. Just like some people try to get people to use gun locks so little kids don't find them and hurt themselves. If you don't like it - then go make your scat photos or counterfeit money in GIMP.
Maybe this is another example of the kind of initiative that bureaucrats dream up all the time and usual get binned immediately, but are nowadays somehow seeing the light of day due to some "homeland security" paranoia. Like telling airline customers not to queue for the toilets in planes or whatever.
We seem to be crossing the barrier from capturing and prosecuting criminals to restraining the general populace in order to protect the status quo institution...
At what point does the government go from serving the wishes of the people to the people serving the wishes of the government?
Take a good and careful look.. this is erosion of freedom at work... Sure maybe it's small and relatively painless.. but then, that's why they call it erosion,
As for the incentive, they most likely want to indemnify themselves in case a criminal organization uses their equipment, and the feds decide to go after the manufacturers, under RICO, Patriot, or whatever other law they can find. This kind of legal battle would have a huge effect on the bottom line.
drm will affect millions of computer users in myriad ways: drm is seriously scary
not being able to copy your $20 bill will affect what... 5 avant garde artists?: yawm
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So, why stop at currency? Imagine if it stopped you using
1) The McDonalds Golden Arches
2) The Mircosoft logo
3) An photo of the president
4) The Nike swish
5)...
All things which could arguabley be copyright and their representation easily recognised. Imagine how much money Adobe could make if it charged $ 5 million to lock a logo/image unless the appropriate adobe supplied plugin is used. Disgraceful.
Another quality troll torpor, but cmon, at least get the basic facts right. Say it with me everyone: THE DMCA WAS SIGNED IN 1998 BY YOUR BOY BILL CLINTON. The one called W had nothing to do with it.
Silly me, I always forget that for the left the world started on Sept. 12th 2001 so how could you possibly know that?
I wonder if more images will incorporate these anticounterfeiting circles? CD covers, web photos, and books could all incorporate this simple design.
What happens if someone puts the circle design on their webpage images? Does this prevent printing, copying, etc. web images?
Circle mania could get very interesting.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This comes across as total bullshit to me. a 14 year old makes a shit copy of a bill and his teachers, parents, judges and lawyers and etc cannot come up with a better solution then to lock the kid up for 7 years? did he set someone on fire in the process or are you just outright lying?
come on, even in this post 9/11 age we arent locking kids up forever for stupid kid mistakes.
Effectively, there's now a standard symbol for "do not copy". It needs to be better publicized, but it's out there. Soon we'll see it on everything.
Explain to me how this equates to HP treating their customers like criminals? And while you're at it, perhaps you could then explain why anyone BUT a criminal would want to print out ultra-high resoultion images of currency.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Just beacuse you can use said device for a crime does not mean it should be crippled.
Charge and convict the criminals. Dont just assume everyone is and cripple the product.
its not the manufacturing companies job to police its usage, its the law enforcements job.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How can a company that produces high quality image reproduction machines be culpable in the event that someone uses it to counterfeit money? It's akin to selling knives, most people use them to cut vegetables, but there are those few who use them to cut people. Doesn't stop the sale of knives, nor does it leave the knife company in legal trouble because someone used it improperly.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Have any of you ever seen a bill printed off of a printer? It looks like monopoly money, even if it's an Epson Pro Stylus 10000 with archival ink, and sweet paper. The only way to get the effect of real money even nearly not "monopoly"-ish, is to use engravings and print the stuff... and believe me, once you start down that road, you're in for some trouble.
stuff |
Suddenly, the expensive printer in your office starts printing every image (but not text) in fluorescent green. It has plenty of magenta toner, plain paper, a surge suppressor, etc. It's having the same problem with both Windows and BSD or Linux computers, so you know it's not a driver issue.
So, what do you do?
You call tech support to find out you need to do a firmware upgrade, remove the network card, turn the printer off & back on, while holding a button, turn it off, replace the network card, turn it back on, and calibrate it 3 times.
Have this same trouble ticket a few times and I bet they'll notify the RCMP, MI-6, FBI, or whatever it is in your country.
All because someone at your office was "playing" with a new logo design, that happens to include a scanned image of the "great pyramid" on the US dollar bill.
Why is anyone surprised? The legal eagles (actually, vultures) have been screaming for a year now that their bread and butter will be in suing manufacturers of equipment used in a crime or civil litigation by convincing people that when you produce a product you commit the crime, the criminal who uses that product is errelevant because he couldn't do it if you didn't make the product (besides, he doesn't have the big pockets to get into, so why would the law (lawyers) have any interest in a petty crook. If you think the gun manufacturers were an abberation you're living in Lilliput.
When someone gets caught with counterfit money they usually lose it, no reimbursement. Lets' say you got your paycheck out of the instant banker in $20s and the cashier at the restaurant finds out they're counterfit. You lose the money, and after talking the police out of taking you to jail (hope you got a printed receipt at the IB) who's your lawyer gonna sue? If you think he's going to sue a petty crook for a few hundred bucks you're nuts.
The major loss of liberties don't come from the government, they come from our fear of the legal vultures and uncontrolled, unjustified litigation.
It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
When they start putting the dots in pr0n images, that will be the END of the internet.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The real issues here is how much bloat and stealing of computing cycles is going into this software that the user neither wants nor needs. Imagine how much computing power is needed to do the image recognition to look at any image and decide if it contains any "forbiden" image, at any angle, before printing it. And the user pays for this, both in wasted memory for that printer "driver" and in computing cycles and time wasted waiting for that software to be run on every page you print.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
>> little rubber stamp with this pattern on it so that you can copy-proof any document you want (do you want the IRS photocopying your 1040? Nah!)
Yeah, but you can bet that the IRS, Police, FBI, Military, and every other government agency will have copiers and scanners that don't look for the symbol.
wbs.
Huh?
Putting restrictions in software is never appropriate.
Not only because it cannot really work correctly, but because freedom is more important than such anti-crime measures, especially when they're so futile.
This is serious stuff. We live in a society where the individual is supposed to make their own decisions. I see a trend towards the government taking over more and more of the decision process. The step is not far from limiting speech. It will ofcourse start with "dangerous" talk. The start is not what worries me but the end, oh boy the end.
Taken togheter these erosion of the individual rights is pretty scary and should not be taken lighly. If you wake up and find yourself in a world where your choices as an individual is severly limited, dont complain.
Now is the time.
HTTP/1.1 400
If people gets used to that law is something that is guarded by technical devices and not by moral and ethical standards of the citizens, we are on a very dangerous path. If peple are forced to follow they will find ways to break it, just for the feeling of freedom it would create.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Sure, sure, the "slippery slop" to totalitarianism, what next and all that. But honestly, how many people *really* need to reproduce PhotoShop quality pictures of currency? Out of all the graphic artists and other visual media people out there need to do this? It's kind of a big "so what" that /. types love to sputter and froth about, but in reality, mostly effects kids trying to copy money.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Governments should release hi res images of fake bills that have identifying marks on them. This way people with legitimate use arguments can use them but still not be able to use them as counterfeit. They could look nearly identical to fake bills but have a differing watermark and a special ID number on them so cashiers can see if it's a fake. Photoshop isn't fool proof. I was able to open a photo of a one dollar bill that I downloaded from the net.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
do you want the IRS photocopying your 1040? Nah
My interactions with the IRS lead me to believe that they would simply throw it out and claim that you never sent it in, all the while cashing your check and filing a claim against you.
Never underestimate the power of laziness.
The ______ Agenda
Boy you are going to get the IP police on you about this one.
Downloading MP3's is NOT a federal crime, for very many reasons.
1) It pisses me off when people leave out the words "without distribution permission". I know why people do it, but the net result is it allows people to label an entire class of LEGAL activity as being shady. For example, absolutely nothing stops me from recording my wife singing, encoding it in the MP3 format, and sharing it. There are plenty of bands (insert rant about commercialized music and better alternatives) that have authorized distribution. MP3 != stolen
2) It's not a federal crime. It's a violated contract. These are civil court infractions, not federal violations.
3) The difference between a civil dispute and a federal crime is quite large. As in the difference between at most a fine and years of jail time.
The parent poster was absolutely right. People forget what a REAL crime it is and ruin their whole lives. You'd honestly be better off stealing a candy bar than forging a $5 to pay for it.
Never confuse volume with power.
For example, Microsoft's future Palladium-enabled PictureIt could be virtually hack-proof compared to Photoshop, which is distributed in hacker-friendly binary form. Microsoft could then say, "Only counterfeiters use software that can be so easily hacked, when a plusuncrime solution exists."
Litigious bastards
if that is the case, it's a bad crime to have on the books.
There is no copyright on the denomination, as it's design is in the public domain. The right to reproduce the likeness is protected by the first amendment. The law should focus on the attempted (or possibly successful) entry of the counterfeit denominations into the marketplace.
I see the act of writing 'usa' on monopoly money and attempting to make a purchase with it a far more serious crime than having you den wallpapered with $100 bills.
I don't know about the U.S. but here in Canada, currency has so many anti-counterfeit measures built into it that if someone could afford to manufacture the printers that would be required to pass something off as the real thing, they don't need to waste time with counterfeiting, because they're already filthy stinkin' rich.
There's much more to paper money than meets the eye, and it's sooo easy to identify forgeries that are mere cosmetic copies (no matter how high resolution the printer or scanner is, the real security details aren't something that any off-the-shelf products could ever even *HOPE* to replicate) that I really don't see why this should be an issue. The only reason fake 5's and 10's ever start getting propogated is because the person they passed them off to was lazy, not because the copy was so good.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That's what makes using DRM (which this is, basically) vs. using open source such a battle. You can't simultaneously have modifiable source code and un-modifiable DRM.
Possibility 1: Because open source flourishes, DRM will be marginalized.
Possibility 2: Because DRM flourishes, open source will be marginalized.
Possibility 3: There is no possibility 3. One or the other is going to be slowly die down to irrelevance. Right now open source actually seems to be winning. I hope it stays that way.
TW
The problem isn't that this is stopping people from printing images of currency, but that it is establishing the principle that it is ok for the government to require programmers to put crime detection / phone home features in their software.
Do you see the problem now?
The "right" being infringed here is very close to speech. The right to write/run software of your own choosing without having to ask the government if it is ok first.
You would consider it a big deal if the government required you to get their approval before publishing an article you had written, wouldn't you?
The phrase prior-restraint comes to mind.
Do you work for the mob?
No... much worse.
;-)
I'm one of those people that expects machines to do what they are told to do... *exactly* what they are told to do.
More importantly, I expect my machines to do exactly what I tell them to do.
Any machine that doesn't, I consider defective.
Might have something to do with why I don't do Windows too...(unless I'm paid for it)
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
>>"What incentive do printer manufacturers have to treat their customers like criminals?"
That's the kind of bratty hyperbole I'd expect to hear from ill-educated 13-year olds. If a device is constructed to attempt to prevent a crime, no one is treating anyone as a "criminal". (Or did you plan on making copies of your dollars?)
Are you offended when you're neighbor locks his doors? Are you offended when your neighbor activates his car alarm? Are you offended that currency is deliberately construcuted to thwart counterfeiting? Are you offended when your favorite retailer's computer checks to make sure the credit card you're trying to use isn't stolen?
Why would you be offended about a piece of hardware that's wired to keep people from committing a crime?
As for the incentive to make these things, perhaps
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Say it with me everyone: THE DMCA WAS SIGNED IN 1998 BY YOUR BOY BILL CLINTON.
Now YOU escuche y repita:
JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE DISLIKES GEORGE W. BUSH DOES NOT MEAN THAT BILL CLINTON IS "THEIR BOY".
I know this was meant as a joke, but it appears that the printer/photoshop/copier/scanner people don't really care about false positives, while the vending machine people definitely would not want to identify a fake as real. If they used this technology, you would simply have to draw a few circles on a piece of paper to get your carbs.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
is it that American money doesn't seem to have any anti-counterfeit technology in it? British notes have watermarks and a strip of foil in them... Which means not every person with a picture of a note and a printer can reproduce them.
Surely it's better stopping counterfeiting by being better at making notes than the counterfeiters than disabling everybody's ability to make legitimate notes?
As an ancap, I believe this is completely legitimate for the private companies ... The day could come when it is enforced by government
/.
I'm beginning to believe anarchist is just another word for ignorant. Every anarchist I've met recently seems to be completely ignorant of every aspect of an issue, most are just protesting for the sake of protesting. As one put it at the software patent protests in Brussels last year, "I protest against everything, but mostly I do this to meet chicks".
Since you weren't paying attention, Adobe's product director Kevin Smith admitted they put this code into their product under pressure from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Department of Fath^WHomeland Defense. They willingly took a chunk of binary code developed by Digimarc and IBM under a contract to the G20 central banks (including the US Federal Reserve), and placed it directly into their product. This code is called at every manipulation of an image, copying to clipboard, pasting, opening a file, saving a file, rotations, etc. It is not a module or a plugin that can be removed, but built into the main PS code.
Although I have yet to see a thorough analysis from reverse engineering the code, I know that Omron, the company that makes the currency detection components used in many photocopiers and printers, promotes three algorithms which are used to detect bills. The most obvious is Digimarc's single color channel circles. The circles can be one of several colors, to blend in with scheme used on the bill. The second requires running Fast Fourier Transforms on the horizontal and vertical slices crossing each curved line on a bill, where each line has a slightly different radius to its bend, and slightly different spacing to the next line. The FFT's output "blows up" into a large, unprocessable value very quickly when it hits a patch of curvy lines. The third has to do with moire patterns, but the detection algoritm is unknown to me.
So there are two main complaints, the first to do with photoshop now running much slower because every manipulation gets passed through the government approval software before happening.
The more vocal complaints are about how the a number of governments have now convinced a bunch of companies to include untested, unknown, "black box" software in their products. Today the extra software is just running a few FFT and pattern matching algorithms which trigger an alert pointing the user to a Euro CentralBank run website. Tomorrow, various governments could require much more intrusive software to be installed in all products or in the operating system itself as a precursor to gently and slowly outlawing "untrustworthy" software. Indeed, the ECB is already contemplating legislation requiring all digital equipment and software that can store or process images to include this software. That includes all camera phones, digital cameras, computers, operating systems, scanners, printers, free software projects like the GIMP, etc.
Get with the panic, this is
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
I have yet to try this on a 20-dollar bill. Either it only detects 20 dollar bills and higher, or the quality of the bill (i.e. slightly creased) dramatically affects whether the software detects currency.
You may have noticed that the 20-dollar bill has gone through several revisions, but the one-dollar bill is the same old style that you used over a decade ago. Why? There is no money in forging one-dollar bills.
The middle mind speaks!