Repeat After Me: Honesty Is the Best Policy
Published January 12, 2004
I have no problem whatsoever with Adobe incorporating anti-counterfeiting technology into Photoshop: the downside for consumers is negligible and the upside that the currencies of the world aren't flooded with perfect digital reproductions is pretty powerful. BUT, why didn't Adobe just tell its customers about it in the first place? They had to know it was going to come up at some point:
- Adobe Systems Inc. acknowledged Friday it quietly added technology to the world's best-known graphics software at the request of government regulators and international bankers to prevent consumers from making copies of the world's major currencies.
....Adobe, the world's leading vendor for graphics software, said the secretive technology "would have minimal impact on honest customers." It generates a warning message when someone tries to make digital copies of some currencies.
The U.S. Federal Reserve (news - web sites) and other organizations that worked on the technology said they could not disclose how it works and would not name which other software companies include it in their products. They cited concerns that counterfeiters would try to defeat it.
"We sort of knew this would come out eventually," Adobe spokesman Russell Brady said. "We can't really talk about the technology itself."
....Adobe revealed it added the technology after a customer complained in an online support forum about mysterious behavior by the new $649 "Photoshop CS" software when opening an image of a U.S. $20 bill.
Kevin Connor, Adobe's product management director, said the company did not disclose the technology at the request of international bankers. He said Adobe may add the detection mechanism to its other products.
"The average consumer is never going to encounter this in their daily use," Connor said. "It just didn't seem like something meaningful to communicate."
Angry customers have flooded Adobe's Internet message boards with complaints about censorship and concerns over future restrictions on other types of images, such as copyrighted or adult material.
....The technology was designed recently by the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group, a consortium of 27 central banks in the United States, England, Japan, Canada and across the European Union, where there already is a formal proposal to require all software companies to include similar anti-counterfeit technology.
....Some policy experts were divided on the technology. Bruce Schneier, an expert on security and privacy, praised the anti-counterfeit technology.
Another security expert, Gene Spafford of Purdue University, said Adobe should have notified its customers prominently. He wondered how closely Adobe was permitted to study the technology's inner-workings to ensure it was stable and performed as advertised.
"If I were the paranoid-conspiracy type, I would speculate that since it's not Adobe's software, what else is it doing?" Spafford said. [AP]
![Adobe Photoshop 7.0 [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VNN0ZF48L._SY90_.jpg "Adobe Photoshop 7.0 [OLD VERSION]")
![Adobe Photoshop CS [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51G31XWX1VL._SY90_.jpg "Adobe Photoshop CS [OLD VERSION]")
![Adobe Photoshop 7.0 (Mac) [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519QPZGTP5L._SY90_.jpg "Adobe Photoshop 7.0 (Mac) [OLD VERSION]")
- Repeat After Me: Honesty Is the Best Policy
- Published: January 12, 2004
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- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Software
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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Alanis and I both do.
And, some of the counterfeiters will call Adobe technical support all infuriated. People are strange.
Why aren't I all that upset about government meddling? Because counterfeiting operations are something the feds have always had a stake in. It is the new abridgements of individual freedom that worry me.
Exactly, it's old news, I heard from someone who worked with Xerox in the early '80s and they were tweaking the green to avoid counterfeiting on copiers then. That's why I don't get why Adobe didn't just add this to the FAQ when they put it in.
Ummm, you do realize that are NUMEROUS legitimate reasons someone migyt want to scan in a manipulate an image of currancy right? You do also realize that this is also a perfectly legal activity provided if you print out an unaltered version of the bill it is either 75% or less than the original size or greater than 150% of its size. This is a a private company basically outlawing a perfectlty legal activity. I hope the market punishes them for this action.
Oh and this won't do a damn thing to prevent serious oprganized counterfiting which is the true threat.
Alanis and I both do
boy eric, you're just full of it today! ;-)
Alright, I am game Paul M Johnson. I would like you to name 5 of your numerous reasons.
I may indeed be full of it today, but other than the creation of art, what are the "numerous" purposes of reproducing currency? All the more reason they should have been honest about it.
How's this protest slogan? "Photoshop doesn't counterfeit, people counterfeit."
anybody ever seen the Nova (i think) show about the artist who made reproductions of currency?
i think his name was boggs.
pretty cool stuff.
Paul, there are enough images of American currency, at least, around to fulfill anyone's needs.
Like Craig, I await your list of legitimate reasons to do this. Take all the space you need.
Kudos to Adobe for paving the way for legal use of their software. Basement photoshop counterfeiters is the last thing the PC world needs.
With that said, this won't stop hardcore countefeiters from writing their own image scanning and editing software. Just counterfeiting the bill is only part of the process, they still need to get the right kind of paper and actually print the bogus currency.
Money feels like, well, money.
All that wasted time to do something illegal ... just think of what better uses of time there are?
5 legitimate reasons to scan in money:
1) news story about the new design of (say) the $20 bill.
2) a news story comparing the designs on the various dollar bills.
3) a school report on paper money form aroundthe world (scan in various examples)
4) creating a statirical version of a $100 with say Bush the Elder on it. (Why shouldn't it look close to a real version of the note?)
5) using the image to create a piece of visual art.
Happy?
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/11651)
"I am really pissed off that my pirated copy of adobe photoshop acts like this."
For the record I don't have a copy of this software, but I wonder how many of the internet users from the message boards actually paid for their copies of the expensive package. Kind of ironic really, don't you think?