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DRM In JPEGs? (eff.org)

Posted by Soulskill on from the do-not-want dept.

JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Adding DRM to JPEG files is being considered by the Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG), which oversees the JPEG format. The JPEG met in Brussels today to discuss adding DRM to its format, so there would be images that could force your computer to stop you from uploading pictures to Pinterest or social media. The EFF attended the group's meeting to tell JPEG committee members why that would be a bad idea. Their presentation(PDF) explains why cryptographers don't believe that DRM works, points out how DRM can infringe on the user's legal rights over a copyright work (such as fair use and quotation), and warns how it places security researchers at legal risk as well as making standardization more difficult. It doesn't even help to preserve the value of copyright works, since DRM-protected works and devices are less valued by users.

6 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. DRM Thwarted by Printscreen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If ever there was a more stupid thing to try to put drm on...

    1. Re: DRM Thwarted by Printscreen by mukinrestak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They don't have to make it impossible, just illegal. And guess what, TPP and its ilk are trying to spread anti DRM circumvention laws to other countries.

    2. Re: DRM Thwarted by Printscreen by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Informative

      Most professional photographers don't use JPG either, we take pictures in RAW - storing as much information losslessly as possible.

      JPG is something you export to for the low-quality versions you put in web based portfolios. For printing you use a lossless format like TIFF pre-sized correctly to page size (because auto-scaling tends to ruin shots) but what you save and store are camera RAW formats (CR2 for canon) which allows you maximum post-processing ability.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  2. All this nonsense by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All this nonsense, defeated by a simple screenshot.

    And I'm sure someone will quickly write a DRM-stripper to clean up these DRM-infected files.

    Let me be as succinct as I can regarding DRM in .jpg files: No. No, no, no.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  3. I'm a JPEG Content producer by JazzXP · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I produce a lot of JPEGs that earn me money and find me clients (photographer)... DRM? Nope, do not want.

  4. Re:Who cares? by urdak · · Score: 5, Informative

    If JPEG finally implemented DRM, then more people would switch.

    You are missing the point... Even if JPEG implements DRM, it doesn't force you to use DRM on the photos you create. You can still take photos, draw images, etc., and not enable DRM on them. So people who currently create JPEGs can continue to use them and don't need to "switch". The problem with DRM is when other people put them on the images they send you. E.g., you browse some website and you see there a DRMed JPEG. How can you "switch" to PNG here?? You didn't create this JPEG, someone else did it, and they did so deliberately.

    What users can do, however, is to not even try to get their content from the official publisher (because it uses some annoying DRM) but rather get the same content from a "pirate" which broke this DRM and converted the content to a more useful format. This is what people have been doing for years for video. I, for example, never use actual DVDs any more (my living-room "DVD player" is stash away in the attic) - I always rip my DVDs to an unencrypted ".vob" file before watching them, and avoid all sorts of region locks, mandatory ads, and other crap the publisher thought he could force on me in the pretense of "copyright".