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News JPEG looks to add DRM to its image format

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Gareth Halfacree, 15 Oct 2015.

  1. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Gareth Halfacree, 15 Oct 2015
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  2. thom804

    thom804 Minimodder

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    Do they want to be replaced? Because that's how you get replaced.
     
    thom804, 15 Oct 2015
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  3. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I just started Archer S6 at lunchtime. Are we still doing 'phrasing?'
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 15 Oct 2015
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  4. jb0

    jb0 Minimodder

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    Two words: Print Screen.
    Copy protection defeated. Thank me later.
     
    jb0, 16 Oct 2015
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  5. Hakuren

    Hakuren What's a Dremel?

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    Anyone thinking that DRM actually protects anything is a lunatic. There is plenty of imaging standards that can replace old jpg.
     
    Hakuren, 16 Oct 2015
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  6. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    You go ahead and try that on a modern non-libre operating system while playing a Blu-ray, let me know how you get on. (If you can't be bothered, I'll tell you: best case, you get a block of a single strange colour representing the surface on which the video was drawn; worst case, you get a message telling you that screenshotting is disabled by your application.)

    Naturally, there are ways around it - especially if we assume that JPEG+DRM isn't going to require HDCP, which is a fair assumption given that JPEG 2000 doesn't. I have an HDMI capture card in my desktop for taking screenshots from single-board computers, and I was surprised to find that Netflix on Android running on some random Chinese board was more than happy to let me capture both audio and video without trouble...
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 16 Oct 2015
    #6
  7. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    Will it be backward compatible with existing JPEG decoders? If no, then it won't be adopted, for the same reason JPEG2000 wasn't: very little improvement in functionality, massive amount of effort required to support it.

    Plus, what would you eve use a 'copy protected' image for?

    I initially did a double-take here; I've taken so many BD screenshots I'd completely forgotten I had AnyDVD installed to strip DRM on-the-fly. Which I guess speaks volumes as to how effective this proposed DRM scheme would be in practice against anyone with the ability to type "copy protected JPEG" into Google.
     
    edzieba, 16 Oct 2015
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  8. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I's a writer, innit, but I also do a not-inconsiderable amount of photography. I used to get really, really annoyed when photographs I had created turned up sans-credit on other websites (or even print publications) as I felt like something was being 'stolen' from me. If you'd said to me I could flick a switch and stop even half of those thefts, I might have been tempted.

    Then my attitude shifted. I realised that yes, Site A might have taken an image I created and was paid for from Site B, but Site A would never have paid me for said image. It's no more a lost sale than a broke college student downloading Adobe Photoshop; (s)he was never going to buy it in the first place, and if the pirated version wasn't available (s)he would simply have used something else.

    So, all my photography is released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike licence these days. Don't get me wrong, even now the cost of licensing my images is £0.00 people still 'steal' 'em by failing to credit me as the source, but I get a lot less worked up about it - and I don't have to sell my soul to the devil that is, as the EFF would say, 'Digital Restrictions Management.'
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 16 Oct 2015
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  9. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    Not sticking up for DRM but there are times when copy protection is needed on images, maybe if they contain personally info about the person in the image and medical images of the top of my head, although i can't see why those limited case scenarios can't be covered with the existing JPEG 2000.
     
    Corky42, 16 Oct 2015
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  10. jb0

    jb0 Minimodder

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    DVD has the same problem. It was also an accidental side effect of using video overlays for performance, and not an intended form of copy protection(because that would've been really dumb).
    I assume the same is true of BluRay, but given the user-hostile behavior of media companies these days, I wouldn't doubt they consider it a feature.


    But I honestly don't see a way they can force every JPEG encoder in the world to update to using a video overlay like video disk playback does.
    Actually, I don't see how they can force them to acknowledge a retrofit copy-protection mechanism at all. But that's neither here nor there.
     
    jb0, 19 Oct 2015
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  11. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    You assume wrong, hence the fact that most Blu-ray players will actually display a message telling you that screenshotting is disabled.
    The JPEG 2000 DRM which would be retrofitted to JPEG doesn't use a video overlay. I don't recall anyone saying that it does.
    That's easy enough: target the content creators. When the content is suddenly unreadable, browsers will add support to make it readable again. It's already happened: there was a stink a while back about open-source browsers adding DRM support for video playback, but they added it anyway and it's still there now. Adding DRM for image display is the next step. (Then text, and won't *that* be an exciting world to live in?)
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 19 Oct 2015
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  12. Bitterix

    Bitterix What's a Dremel?

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    A good open alternative just needs to gain traction and things like Joint Photographic Expert Group (JPEG) can kiss themselves goodbye. Should that happen it would also be virtually impossible to get rid of.

    I read about FLIF a while ago, looks very promising, impressive even. Would also be well suited for today's internet with different sized devices and data plans. If something like FLIF gets completed and takes off JPEG would be like tape drives at best

    http://flif.info/
     
    Bitterix, 19 Oct 2015
    #12
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