Canon Files For DSLR Iris Registration Patent

An anonymous reader writes "Canon has filed for a patent for using iris watermarking (as in the iris of your eye) to take photographer's copyright protection to the next level. You set up the camera to capture an image of your eye through the viewfinder. Once captured, this biological reference is embedded as metadata into every photo you take. Canon claims this will help with copyright infringement of photos online."

Comments

uh

[legoman666]

remove the meta data?

Re:uh

[fonik]

I'm guessing they'll use some kind of watermarking. But, do you really want every photo you take to be unambiguously traced back to you? On one hand, photos you take can be traced back to you. On the other hand, the watermarking or metadata could probably be removed by a third party. It seems lose-lose for the camera owner.

Re:uh

[fireman sam]

Or worse. Your camera gets stolen and is used to photograph illegal activities. The images are then posted on the net with your watermark on them. Cops arrive at your door and your life is history.

Re:uh

[fredklein]

Um, you fail.

As a result of the foregoing, biological information indicative of a photographer need not be acquired every time an image is taken and, hence, processing executed by the imaging apparatus is not subjected to a load in terms of the sequence of photography.

Re:uh

[dgatwood]

Yeah, but as soon as the patent describes the technique publicly, it would be possible to extract the metadata block from someone else's photos, use the same technique with that data, and extort money from someone, e.g. "Don't want these photos of kiddie porn signed with your iris? Put ten million dollars in non-consecutive unmarked bills in a brown paper bag under the mailbox at 5th and Rochester."

Am I missing something?

Re:uh

[NotQuiteReal]

What is an illegal picture?

"Think of the children".

Not in that way, you pervert!

Re:uh

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

It's different because in one case, the watermark is an optional feature added for the benefit of the user, and in the other case, it's forced mark that has been added without consideration for what it best to the user.

Explain to me how this is any different? One day it's an "option" in the high-end DSLR firmware. Next year it's turned on by default in the midrange. Couple years down the road, it'll be standard. Year after that, it'll be illegal not to ship a camera with the iris-based tracking system.

There is no real reason to think this is true. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Many people here are so paranoid that they think everyone is out to get them. If watermarks on printers were announced as a feature before they were ever put into production, do you think it would have been as successful? And how can this be forced onto people anyway? There is no way for the camera to tell if the photo of your iris is really yours or not to begin with. Don't you think there might be a reason for that? If Canon really wanted to track you, don't you think a more simple UID watermark generated on the camera would be the best way to do it?

But hey, mod me down, because by the rating you seem to be getting, there must be quite a few others wearing their tin-foil hats today.

I have great concern about privacy and the use of technology in general. I used to be an EFF member in sunnier days of higher income, but what I really can't stand are "advocates" who overreact to these types of things without even considering if it's really a problem.

Re:uh

[Jeppe Salvesen]

flickr would become one.

Sweet

[geekoid]

Now if I need to break into someplace that use iris biometrics I can just get that from a photo off of Myspace!

Re:Sweet

[jjeffries]

Yeah, that's awesome, I was getting sick of ripping eyes out with a ballpoint every time I needed to defeat an iris scan... it really screws up the pen!

Re:Sweet

[timeOday]

Practically every post here raises one of a small handful of obvious concerns. Funny thing is they're answered within just two sentences of the article:

"Alternatively, by processing an acquired biological image into a personal authentication code and recording the code in the image of a subject, the amount of personal data serving as additional information may be reduced." In other words, no, an image of your iris cannot be recovered from the watermark.

"Alternatively, by embedding personal data which is biological information in the image of a subject as an electronic watermark, falsification can be prevented more robustly." In other words, no, the information won't just be easily removed tags in the metadata.

That's right, armchair experts, Canon isn't stupid enough to develop this entire application of watermarking without even knowing the first thing about it. Surprise!

... whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[Mantaar]

And also help to track down that pesky journalist/blogger/dissident always posting images the government doesn't like? No, I'm not referring to any government in particular.

So we'll have journalist's contact lenses if those things become the DRM of digital photography?
Like with most advancements in modern electronics, this one does not go down my throat without a huge grain of salt.

Re:... whatcouldpossiblygowrong

[rossz]

The first thing I thought of after reading the intro paragraph was, "how is this going to be abused?" And what you suggest was exactly what i was thinking. First the government will require all cameras have this technology embedded in it to save the children from pornographers! Then they'll use it to track down that traitorous bastard commie journalist that took pictures of Senator Greedy and his hooker girlfriend (which were faked!).

Note to self: Get more foil from the supermarket.

hmm..

[bigattichouse]

So does reflecto-porn count as prior art? I mean, if you consider "unique image of the photographer embedded in the photograph" as prior art.

Re:metadata

[gandhi_2]

pfff. oh yeah. right. with some "magical hex editor" or something. keep dreaming.

Is it really watermarking if it's in the metadata?

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds pretty easy to strip out after the fact. Or, for that matter, to add in. What makes this any better than adding your name or email address to the metadata, as most cameras allow you to do now?

Proving an image is yours generally isn't even a problem. Online images are lower resolution versions of the originals, only the photographer will be able to produce an image with many times the quality of the online version. The problem is a) finding out that your images are being used without your permission, and b) getting it to stop. Both of these are made much more difficult by the global nature of the Internet, and neither of them are made any easier by this iris watermarking, as far as I can tell.

In the land of the blind...

[VampireByte]

... the one-eyed man is king (but meta tagged).

uh...turn it off?

[Quadraginta]

Or don't buy the camera?

This is something Canon would tout as a feature of their camera, for which artists would pay a premium, so that they could more easily prove that a particular photo belongs to them.

Keep in mind these are people who (1) earn their daily bread by taking amazing photos, and (2) often have to endure years and years of dry spells before one particular photo hits the big time and generates widespread interest. They have a very strong interest in controlling the reproduction and use of their photos, so they can get paid for their years of effort. A feature like this, sort of an automatic unfakeable "signature" embedded in each frame, would make it much easier for them to prove that a given photo is their property.

You might not like that of course, but that just means you're not a photographer. Presumably when it comes to whatever you do creatively, that takes years of discipline and effort to do, and which puts the food on your table, is not something you'd like people to just be able to duplicate and distribute randomly and broadly without even asking you first.

Think of it as the equivalent of your engraving your SSN on your very expensive tools, so that if they're ripped off you can prove they're yours.

Re:uh...turn it off?

[photomonkey]

Pro photographer here:

It's not that hard to prove ownership of photos (for purposes of copyright assertions). I've gone head-to-head with people a couple times to prove that I created (and therefore was the owner of) the work in question. Nobody's ever argued that, really.

The problem with copyright is more on the law side than the proving ownership side. Copyright attorneys are wildly expensive, and cases are usually long and drawn-out. Plus, just holding the copyright only entitles the owner to sue for actual damages. Only when the work is registered Federally within 90 days of publication (first use) can the owner sue for anything more than actual cost (IE, damages). Hopefully damages are enough to cover not only the bills, but the work missed while in court.

I would much rather see a less tiered system where any use outside of fair use (and I have a broad view of fair use) is open to suit for cost as well as damages. I don't mind seeing one of my photos on a MySpace page or copied to someone's blog (especially if I'm actually given credit), or even if someone goes to my site, grabs a bunch of photos and makes a screensaver FOR THEMSELVES, but I can't stand it when my photos are appropriated into ads, tourist sites, news sites I didn't contract with, etc.

It is much easier (and cheaper) to spell out user licenses and sue for breach-of-contract than it is to get anyone on copyright infringement and actually have it be worth your time to pursue.

In my estimation, the ONLY good thing to come from the DMCA is the ability to serve voluntary and involuntary infringers with takedown notices relatively easily and cheaply.

Nothing to do with copyright

[SuperBanana]

Canon has filed for a patent for using iris watermarking (as in the iris of your eye) to take photographer's copyright protection to the next level.

No, putting your photos on a CD or DVD and then following these instructions takes it to the next level. It helps that a)you have the RAW files and nobody else does and b)most cameras encode their serial number into the EXIF data (or similar for a RAW image), and if you have proof of ownership of said camera...

I didn't see anything in the patent summary provided by the linked site that related to ease of copyright enforcement. Just:

Alternatively, by embedding personal data which is biological information in the image of a subject as an electronic watermark, falsification can be prevented more robustly.

Wow, you don't say. We can do that now- it's called Digimarc. They'll even crawl the web for you and look for images with your Digimarc watermark. Too bad it costs about a zillion dollars- their pricing model means that only a small number of pros use it (and you pay for both per-image watermarking, AND the services like web crawling.) This technology is sufficiently expensive and limited in scope to mean that it will never make it into anything except the 1D series cameras- it probably wouldn't even make it into the _0D series.

I really don't see an application for this technology, except for *maybe* press agencies, where they want to (more) easily track who took what photo. This is a fairly painless way of doing so; you no longer need to track who has what camera (Canon and Nikon provide loaners for repairs and loaners for special events, which means that no, it's not 1 person, 1 camera. Pro's also often shoot with more than one body.)

Though really, they could do the same thing with a microSD slot (where shooting preferences could be stored, too) for a lot cheaper. The only thing this gets them is more "proof", maybe- if they can somehow provide tamper-proof metadata (supposedly, the "data verification kit" from Canon provides verifiable images, but I've never seen even the most basic description of how it works.)

typicalslashdotkneejerkreaction

[SuperBanana]

And also help to track down that pesky journalist/blogger/dissident always posting images the government doesn't like? No, I'm not referring to any government in particular.

They'd be storing a *representation* of the iris image data. Useless for matching. Watermarking the actual image is only mentioned very briefly and in passing, in a sort of "oh, and you could watermark the image with this" kind of way.

Given Canon's bread and butter with pro cameras are the press (your cute digital rebel costs $700; a 1DMk3 is $4k), they're unlikely to do anything that will piss them off.

if only there were some way to remove metadata

[JeanBaptiste]

like maybe the print screen button

As a photographer...

[Idiot with a gun]

It's neat, but I'm not sold. The real issue with it all, is not proving that it's your photograph. RAW files, EXIF data, and having a whole sequence of photographs instead of one, can help prove that a photograph actually belongs to you. The issue more often than not is commercial photographers not going after those that infringe upon their copyrights. I know it sounds draconian, but that's life. I love my Creative Commons as much as the next *nix user, but if you're trying to make your living off of it, you can't hand it away.

Re:As a photographer...

[Zymergy]

As another photographer, I fully agree.

I have seen some photographers not even bother to go after the unauthorized or unlicensed use of their images... that is until they are published someplace with deep pockets who is likely to quickly $ettle well when sued.

Another issue is the fact that the camera is NOT taking an image of the photographer's iris *every time* the button is pressed and then real-time embedding it into the RAW CCD dump before compression, post in-camera processing, etc..
This may as well be something that is done from the PC/Mac Editing workstation using special watermarking software when memory cards are dumped if it is not to be in-camera and real-time every-time.

I remember being on "assignment" and shooting "humorous" pictures that were not necessarily related to my paid task, which later were widely circulated in company-wide email (say, like when I caught a police officer in his patrol car SLEEPING... I silently placed dozen krispy-kremes onto his hood just in front of his open window (as I maniacally laughed inside my head while rubbing hands together)... Boy, and I am sure glad that that officer could not 'prove' who shot the images. Heard that the police chief got a copy too.. LOL Parking ticket payback.

Pro gear or not, any "big glass" shooters will have that crap switched off in a heartbeat if the embedding technology affects/delays shooting performance in ANY way. I know many pros who only shoot in "manual" modes because the internal computers on modern digital cameras inpart too much delay (ANY is too much for a Pro). Typically the only auto feature used are AP (Aperture Priority) with Ultrasonic/Hypersonic (Canon/Nikon) autofocus lenses... the rest are more/less for noobs and wedding photographers.

It also has been my experience that effective watermarking would require some form of "crippling" in Photoshop (and any other pro editing software apps used in the biz). Thjis is just another in the long line or DRM. If you can detect it, there too is a way to remove it. (If anyone would like an example, take some high-rez RAW images of US paper currency (20's and higher I believe) and then attempt to edit those files at high res in Photoshop (el al) and then print them on a high end color printer. The software and the printers are deliberately modified to not allow the operations (by design) because they "recognize" the US currency and prevent the operation. I believe color copiers also have this "feature". http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/08/0111228
I see this technology as also requiring a level of watermark removal prevention built into the software. Nothing like everyone's secret-sauce editing followed by flattening and a batch-resize with unsharp-mask followed up with everyone's favorite RGB->CMYK conversion (and color loss) to have fun with watermarks. Many imagers I know, wipe their metadata to help mask technical details of how the shot was made (or in my case I'd put made-up BS data in there, f32, ISO6400, 1200mm, etc..)... there are many copycats out there in the competitive world of photography. Something like this reads to me to be a possible new file format. That alone would kill industry-wide adoption (unless it is FREE and far superior compared to JPG, TIF, and RAW "lossless" CCD dump formats.)
I'd like to see how Canon implements it and how useful it actually *is*.

idiotic

[nguy]

Using a biometric identifier for watermarking is pointless and only broadcasts your biometric id across the world. Biometric ids are there for proving that you are you, not that something belongs to you.

If you have a good watermarking scheme, embed a string like "This image is Copyright 2008 by ..." into the images. If, for some reason, you want to sign your images digitally, sign them digitally.

RTFA, it's YOU who jumped the gun...

[msauve]

the invention does not capture an iris image with each shot. In fact, it describes allowing up to 5 users to pre-register their irises in the camera. It goes on to say...

As a result of the foregoing, biological information indicative of a photographer need not be acquired every time an image is taken and, hence, processing executed by the imaging apparatus is not subjected to a load in terms of the sequence of photography. Furthermore, biological information can be registered in advance.

Don't look into viewfinder with remaining eyeball

[billstewart]

I'd much rather set the metadata to some passphrase of mine which I can choose for the occasion than be stuck with at most two sets of metadata for all my pictures. Or if I really wanted a biometric, a voiceprint would be more useful (because I could say something like "Washington DC, Nov 5, 2008" or whatever useful tagging I want.) Or even a thumbprint would be better than my eyeprint.

And then there's that James Bond movie scene ....

You *BOTH* fail

[Khyber]

"You set up the camera to capture an image of your eye through the viewfinder. Once captured, this biological reference is embedded as metadata into every photo you take."

Reading over the technical paper, the camera only needs it once, for up to 5 users. The image of the user(s) iris is then stored in non-volatile RAM. If a person steals and uses the camera, your iris (or whomever it was set for previously) will still be the imprint unless they goe back into the Iris capture mode and does the whole setup process over again. Then again, that's a standard for almost EVERY digital camera out there. Once a mode is set, it remains set until a user changes things. All incarnations of my Kodak and Canon digital camera keep resolution choice, last exposure setting, ISO, etc. until you specifically change it in the menu.

So in reality, five different people could get royally fucked.

So much for you morons RTFUCKINGA. Here, let me repost the important part of TFA so you don't have to waste your bandwidth trying to read the page, since you're apparently too lazy to do so anyways:

Canon's Iris Registration Patent

A recent Canon patent application (Pub. No.: US 2008/0025574 A1) reveals the next step in digital watermarking - Iris Registration.

The short and sweet of it?

      1. Turn the Mode dial to "REG"
      2. Choose between "REG 1 through "REG 5 (for up to 5 registered users)
      3. Put eye to viewfinder
      4. Look at display of center distance measurement point
      5. Press the shutter button
      6. Iris image captured
      7. Go shoot

Additional embedded info can be added later. All metadata will be added to images after you're finished shooting in a collective manner and not for each image. The purpose of the collective tagging, if you will, is to refrain from hampering the camera's speed (frames per second) while shooting.

I don't think I need to embarrass either of you any further.

Glad this is not in place yet.

[Shadowlore]

So your photographer gets laser surgery and due to the differences in the outer part of the eye the signature is different and now they don't match their old photos? Yes, LASIK (for example) doesn't affect normal iris scans because those use IR to scan the iris itself. But this apparently takes a picture of the eye. And yes a picture can be affected by eye surgery.