Slashdot Mirror
27 Central Banks Push Anti-Counterfeit Software
securitas writes "GlobeTechnology reports that the 27-member Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group is behind the anti-counterfeit software in Adobe Photoshop CS, Ulead PhotoImpact, Jasc Paint Shop Pro and others. Consortium members of the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group include the USA, Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia and many more. Law enforcement agencies and banknote-issuing authorities say that it is a response to the rapid growth of digital counterfeiting. The software is distributed free of charge to hardware and software manufacturers and is voluntary to use. But the European Union is drafting legislation to force manufacturers to include anti-counterfeit measures in all systems, scanners or printers sold in Europe. Counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting with Adobe Photoshop and other products like inkjet printers have been the subject of recent discussion on Slashdot."
Honestly, I don't see why people would be too up in arms about this. Digital copying of money can produce some pretty good fakes. And remember, the standard a counterfeit bill has to pass is not an expert's exam, but the exam of the kid at the grocery store. If the bad guy can successfully pass the bill there, it's too late.
Afterall, those who want to photograph money for inclusion in a poster or such in compliance with the too big, too small or other clearly-wrong copy rules spelled out in the law can still do so optically. Making images of money shouldn't be as easy as technology has made making images of everything else.
- it's not really designed to. Sure, the big organised crime gangs will get around it with no problems at all. But it will stop the casual counterfeiter. This is what it is designed to do.
The problem of course is that _sometimes_ it gets in the way of legitimate uses of digital technology. This is an example of one idiot ruining it for everyone. Life's like that. I pay high car insurance premiums because other people are stupid/lazy/drunk/asleep, even though I'm not.
Yeah, it's annoying, but that's life. It would just be nice if the companies would be more up-front about it. Good on Adobe for coming clean; but they needn't have denied it in the first place!
-- Your mother uses Emacs.
It's a never ending game. As E. E. Smith said, what physical science can devise, physical science can analyse and reproduce. We just have to keep moving the bar higher than the counterfeiters can easily reach. If the typical US bank note is too easily copied by technology available to the home user, then it's time for the typical US bank note to be updated. Not for the technology to be crippled...
What is the point, if anyone really wants to conterfiet software, they'll find a copy of older versions around. It will work just as well. Heck, why not use paint, with some skill that could work. This won't deter those who truely want to counterfiet. Maybe it will save a few $100 a year from those who are lightly considering it, but mainly it will kunut people who want crystal clear images which the software determines to look like money. This hurts, not helpes IMO
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The heart of the problem is that the legal tender is easily replicable. Coins are harder to reproduce and the payoff is much lower than paper money. Paper money, because it must be printed is susceptible to counterfeiting.
The counterfeiters who are truly making a dent in the money supply don't use Photoshop, though. For the most part, they have real drum printers and very sophisticated printing plates. They are printing money onto real fiber paper. They certainly aren't printing bills out on their Epson Deskjet onto White Shark recycled office paper.
At the extremely low level of low-cost counterfeiting which these software controls attempt to prevent, there simply isn't enough money being produced to worry about. The guy in his basement printing maybe a hundred thousand dollars a day out of his inkjet printer can only use so much of that before getting red flagged by some clerk who notices that his $100 bill isn't quite right (usually because the paper is different).
These software controls don't do anything to attack the real problem of counterfeiters who are doing the real damage printing millions of dollars which are indistinguishable from real money.
I have been pwned because my
This is a genuine question : how is it a bad thing ?
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For me, that means two things
1) if you want to do some parody bill, well, you'll still can, you'll just have to make sure that even from far it looks like parody.
2) 15 years old kids that get drunk for the first time and think that it is a good idea to make some cheap bill to get that coke free won't go 15 years in jail.
This thing just means that if you want to make false money, you'll have to dig a little bit. And if you do, it's clear that you wanted to counterfeit, and you'll go to jail. On the other hand, some kid won't be able to pool a cheap prank that can get him in serious troubles. Good chances are that he'll think "hey, if i've got to go to www.falsemoney.ze, maybe the police/secret service/whatever will notice, so maybe I shouldn't".
Remember, this thing is not, has never been, and will never be to deter mafias from counterfeiting. It's just to make it hard enough for Joe Schmoe that he has to think about his actions, and then decide that it would be stupid to risk 15 years for a prank.
"excuse me sir, I represent the 27 banks the currently back all major mutual funds that invest in your company and keep it afloat. We would like you to put this software in your product please"
Funny how the word voluntary seems to be changing of late.
Does anybody else think it's a BAD idea to try to legislate software features? Am I the only one who thinks that could cause a lot of problems? - Eric
MakePassword.com Mp3 Blog
This could be the first step in the criminalization(sp) of open source software. What starts out as voluntary usually ends up becoming mandatory(Anyone remember the "double-nickel" on the american interstates?)
What?
For example, with a printer, something along the lines of a microcontroller (running embedded linux) which connects to the print head, print head drive circuits and paper drive circuits. The existing printer is used only toprovide a mechanical chassis.
It might even make financial sense. Buy that entry level printer, which uses similar mechanical components to that high end printer, and end up with an 'open source' solution that exceeds the capabilities of the high end printer but costs less. Alternatively, don't throw out that obsolete printer but reuse the chassis and convert it into a state-of-the-art printer.
You'd want to hope by "scanners" they meant the hardware. If the hardware (or at least the firmware within) incorporates the feature, only hacking that firmware would remove the "feature." The last thing we'd want to see is someone having to write a patch to GIMP to implement this useless feature.
But since this is happening in the EU, this begs a question... how does the machine know it's money? The colour? Certainly not the pictures since I'm led to believe each EU country has a different picture on it.
One thing's for sure, anyway. In the EU, settling on a specific, single picture per note would do more to prevent counterfeiting than preventing a few pieces of scanner hardware from working.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Finally, it's just another symptom of the nanny-state mentality that is pervading modern society.
... or how Calvinist Geneva was practically a police state ... or how Sparta was literally a police state ... or how most of Roman history is characterized by subordination of the individual to the state ... for that matter, consider that most of human history is characterized by the institution of slavery.
The nanny-state mentality (nice phrase) isn't peculiar to modern society -- it's common throughout history.
Check out, for example, the history of sumptuary laws
On the balance, the nanny state has been the historical norm; widespread respect for individual initiative is a relatively recent phenomenon.
-kgj
-kgj
So, the question is - don't you all think it will come down to point where the Government issues cash cards?
I think it's more likely that government as we know it will fail altogether, and credit card companies will step in to fill the void.
-kgj
-kgj
Fortunately, open source has already secured a position of economic importance, so this is never going to happen.
There will be conflicts ahead, of course, and not just on this counterfeiting issue. Another that's already threatening, here in the U.S., is the broadcast flag for digital television. That seems equally incompatible with open source.
It will be, ah, interesting to see how this plays out in the next few years.
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Allow perfect scanning, perfect printing, and simply don't allow an exact-scale bill to be printed. All other arguments aside, I don't see how anyone would be hurt by not allowing a bill to be printed within 10% of its true scale. All else being the same, what's wrong with this?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The problem is that once these copy protection controls are installed everyone will want to use them. Markus Kuhn of Cambridge University has discovered one of the patterns used for detection of bank notes, known as the EURion Constellation. Sure, it's not that big of a deal when only bank notes have the constellation, but expect to see the constellation start showing up in the darndest places.
Soon everyone and their brother will start printing the Constellation onto whatever they feel needs "copy protection." You'll see it printed on photographs and forms and all kinds of junk. Regular people will have their right to make copies and the ability to use their own equipment usurped by others abusing a mechanism that was only supposed to inconvenience counterfeiters.
People have a right to use software that does not impose arbitrary restrictions upon them. When Adobe has a virtual monopoly on the image editing market (because their software is really freakin' good), it is in their best interest not to alter the software in such a way that pisses off their customers.
Both Adobe and the Government need to learn a lesson from the recording industry: don't alienate the consumers by adding "features" that restrict their personal rights. Uncle Sam does not need to get involved in this process; what he should do instead is invest more energy into training cashiers pens that change color on fake money, and train cashiers better on how to spot fakes.
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If you ban a technology, only criminals will use it. If you ban a popular technology, you turn most of the population into criminals.
As "end targets" of the process, they transform data into false money. Not much can be done further. Cutting, macerating to make them look old, or whatever you plan to do with fake money. And if they don't look like real, you can safely print them and assume they are not real.
But what about scanners and editing software? Bullshit. I scan in $1 to paste my face in and morph it to pink. How illegal is that? I want to include a pile of bills in a clipart I create. I want to create textures for a game I write. I can't, because the data - before being processed - is considered "intended for illegal use". That's complete bullshit. Scanners and image processing software are no place for anti-counterfeiting measures.
It's like I approach a military base and put a film in my camera. I get arrested for taking photos of military objects, even though I didn't even aim my camera at them, and never intended to.
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The fact of the matter is that the "big boys" in counterfeiting are NOT using a $50.00 scanner and a $19.99 inkjet printer.
... much like the RIAA's current problems dealing with many ordinary people with networked computers.
Perhaps the problem they are facing is that a few big boys are being joined by lots of little boys?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
If legal copies of Photoshop don't work, criminals will only have pirated copies. Wow, big cultural shift there. Think of the awesome deterrent power of that law. Think of all those would-be counterfeiters who will say, "I'll steal from people I don't know, but I would never steal from Adobe."
I often think that only skilled programmers should be allowed to make laws. Those who are making laws now are so illogical that they would never have run-time bugs because they would never get anything to compile.
If you spend several years writing complex programs and debugging them, you develop respect for your own imperfect logic, and for the need to check your work, 90 or 900 times if needed. You develop respect for logic itself, and for the operation of your brain.
Many people become lawmakers because they are somewhat popular, and got elected, only that. For some of them, if clicking on File/Save causes the program to exit, that's okay. It's better not to spend too much time thinking.
Simply add this Eurion Constellation mark to all your pictures, documents, etc.. Programs incorporating a mechanism that prevents you from altering such pictures will simply become unusable up to the point nobody wants to use them anymore or the protection is removed.