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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-oughta-be-in-pictures dept.

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".


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  • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday August 12 2018, @08:12AM (2 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Sunday August 12 2018, @08:12AM (#720497) Journal

    cn I take a photograph of a blockchain?

    Does my camera have to be connected to the internet to take photos?

    Does my computer add the blockchain code when it adds the company's watermark?

    How much bitcoin does the blockchain company charge to remove all the watermarks?

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 12 2018, @11:34AM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday August 12 2018, @11:34AM (#720519) Journal

    Will they implement copyright expiry into the blockchain? I don't think so, although it should be possible in principle.
    How will the blockchain detect fair use? I don't think that's even possible.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 12 2018, @04:25PM (#720598)

      Will they implement copyright expiry into the blockchain? I don't think so, although it should be possible in principle.

      Never, because then it would be clear to everybody that copyright actually expires sometime. The current system is much better because you can never be sure whether the copyright of some item has actually expired because of the current byzantine multilayered system.

      Just look at this goddamn mess https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain [cornell.edu]