Saw this article on Reddit. Apparently the JPEG is considering blockchain to insert DRM in the photo format.
The Joint Photographic Experts Group is a working group of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). They're best known for the JPEG standard for image compression, and for various related image standards.
They had their 78th quarterly meeting from 27 January to 2 February 2018 — with the press release afterwards prominently namedropping "blockchain."
The Twitter reaction was "lol what," and even the cryptocurrency press ignored it — but there's more to this than slapping on a buzzword, and it's not good. They seem to think they can advance the cause of DRMed JPEGs with a bit of applied blockchain.
The Quarterly meeting and official announcement were back in February, so this article is a bit behind, but I had not heard anything of this.
As a photog who routinely plasters watermarks all over photos of my children before releasing them to the wilds of social media I can sympathize with the desire to protect photos, but on the surface this seems an odd way to go about it. For now, though, it's just something they're "exploring".
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 12 2018, @05:14AM (8 children)
Finally I can replace my JPEG 2000 images with a superior format.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @05:41AM (2 children)
Wow, JPEG2000. Used by maybe 4 people on the planet. As may befall this proposed JPPeG, the extra P is for 'Privacy" (cough DRM cough).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @02:31PM (1 child)
JPEG2000 is the go to format for high resolution scan raws before they get processed. It's used by far more than 4 people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @11:25PM
Are you talking about the lossless JPEG2000 format? Otherwise your comment wouldn't make sense.
(Score: 2) by Apparition on Sunday August 12 2018, @01:03PM (4 children)
I wish JPEG 2000 actually took off. Or at least JPEG-XR. But, in the Year of Our Lord 2018, everyone still uses regular ol' JPEG. I actually partially blame Mozilla for that, because their developers insist that JPEG is "enough" and see no reason to add JPEG 2000 or JPEG-XR support to Firefox even though they both have open source decoders.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Sunday August 12 2018, @01:47PM (3 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1#AV1_Still_Image_File_Format_(AVIF) [wikipedia.org]
As for Firefox, given that "nobody" is making/using JPEG2000, adding support for it could just be adding new bugs, i.e. potential vulnerabilities.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Sunday August 12 2018, @02:01PM (2 children)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16803250 [ycombinator.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Apparition on Sunday August 12 2018, @03:03PM (1 child)
Interesting, thanks. Now the trick will be to see if AV1F actually sees support and gets used, or if it withers on the vine like JPEG 2000, JPEG-XR, WebP, and BPG [bellard.org].
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 12 2018, @06:00PM
I'm already worried about the name. AVI...F? And work on the standard [cnet.com] is very preliminary since they want to get AV1 good and supported. That's crucial since it will be an uphill battle to get the same kind of hardware support that H.264 and H.265 have.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]