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This is one of the things that made me really see the value of free software.

I did verify experimentally that the Eurion constellation alone doesn't trigger photoshop's image rejection algorithm. I think it would be fun to distribute a bunch of images that false-positive the digimarc algorithms, just to mess with people.



They could add the detection to GIMP. But then that would reveal what the algorithm is. And that would allow specific strategies for producing false negatives or false positives.

I'm still undecided about whether countermeasures to reverse engineering like this are useful or not in the long run.


Adding it to GIMP would be useless, because it would be trivial to produce a patch to disable the functionality.


These measures can stop a kid from counterfeiting. That's all they do. I'm sure in the process they could create some kind of sporadic troubles to designers which paid for the expensive software.

You can't possibly think that a criminal organization, with average tech resources, will have a hard time getting around this in a way or another.


It wouldn't even stop a kid. It would only stop the technically incompetent.

But that's the whole point. If you can stop the idiots from copying notes, you have a lot fewer potential counterfeiters to deal with.


That sounds like a decent addition to watermarking. It'd be difficult to crop out a watermark if you can't open the image in an image editor.


There's actually a nice service to build here: "invisible watermarking" for photographers and designers...


I think this feature was built into a Photoshop plugin in 1996. Digimarc.


I very much doubt there is any way you could do this with arbitrary images without completely destroying them.


This is one of the things that made me really see the value of free software.

How do you mean? Is there much (legal) value to be had from image software that can process accurate scans of currency? I'm just kind of confused here, what value you speak of.


Because my software should never tell me that I can't do something for non-technical reasons. Assuming I'm a criminal is wrong. If I was a criminal, breaking the law is my decision, and my software should not impede my ability to do so.


Furthermore, criminals are usually motivated enough to find something else that will do the job.

The Photoshop anti-counterfeiting stuff? It just scares off amateurs with an inkjet who don't realize every page from their printer has a tiny coded tracking mark that identifies the printer, date, and time.


> every page from their printer has a tiny coded tracking mark that identifies the printer, date, and time.

Another argument for free software.


For free hardware.


See below for example: "When I used to make news graphics for a tv station, every now and then this problem in Photoshop would arise and it was incredibly annoying to make anything with a flat dollar bill as part of the background."




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