Just as the rumble over
Just as the rumble over Adobe's new M$-style activation of Photoshop CS begins to die down, the squeaky wheels of the art community rear their ugly heads to champion a new cause: artistic censorship. Err... sorta. Basically, Adobe added some core code to Creative Suite that fucks with you if you try to use CS to counterfit money (Euros included). Personally, I think they did a pretty good job making this transparent and as long as you are within the legal fair use of currency duplication for art, you shouldn't have a problem. People just like to bitch for the sake of bitching perhaps? Anyhoo, here is a psuedo-official reply from Adobe:
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Kevin Connor - 06:33pm Jan 8, 2004 Pacific
As someone at Adobe who was involved in the decision to include counterfeit deterrence in Photoshop CS, let me finally provide you with a response to all of these concerns and questions. Sorry for the delay!:
Photoshop CS does indeed include a counterfeit deterrence system (CDS) to prevent the illegal duplication of banknotes. The CDS was created by a consortium of central banks from around the world. We, along with other hardware and software manufacturers, have included CDS in our products at their request to address the threat posed by the use of digital technologies in the counterfeiting of banknotes. There are other software products from other companies that already use this same technology. There are also hardware products that use the same or similar technology. For example, most color copiers sold today will not allow you to copy currency.
As digital imaging technology advances, becoming more broadly available and user friendly, the old barriers to currency reproduction are becoming less effective. The unscrupulous are taking advantage of the functionality that is being provided to the vast majority of honest users for the purposes of counterfeiting currency. In the US and around the world, counterfeiting through digital means is increasing exponentially, and retailers and the general public--including our own customers--are at risk.
Counterfeit currency is essentially a hot potato. Whoever holds it last, loses. The person who loses isn't necessarily the counterfeiter. There's no government body in place to "reimburse" people who, through no fault of their own, get paid with currency that turns out to be counterfeit. In our implementation of CDS, we've worked very hard to balance the need to protect these unsuspecting victims of counterfeiting along with the need to continue to provide a product that efficiently does what honest customers need it to do.
There appear to be several major concerns and objections repeated throughout this message thread, so I'll try to address each one individually:
1. Performance: CDS does not cause any noticeable slowdown in Photoshop performance. During most operations performed in Photoshop, CDS is not used at all. When it is used, the performance impact often is just a fraction of a second.
2. Legal use of notes: It is true that the current implementation of CDS will prevent you from scanning in your own banknotes even if your usage intent is entirely within legal boundaries. Regulations for using banknote images vary by country. It is the responsibility of the central bank in each country to provide images that can be used within the legal guidelines of that country. In other words, if you want to legally reproduce images of the new $20US bills on a Web site or in a marketing brochure, you can contact the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing for legal images that can be opened and manipulated in Photoshop CS. (You can visit them at http://www.moneyfactory.com.) Similar solutions should be available in other countries. If you find that your central bank is not providing adequate support to permit legal uses of their banknote images, then you should let them know.
3. Adobe's intentions: Please be assured that this implementation of CDS is not a step down the road towards Adobe becoming "Big Brother." We know that one of the reasons people love Photoshop is because it's an incredibly flexible tool that can be used for so many different things. That's also one of the reasons we at Adobe enjoy working on new versions. Finding ways to prevent you from doing things in Photoshop really doesn't interest us! Moreover, the CDS is not Adobe technology, but was provided by the central banks, who would have no reason to want to restrict anything other than bank notes. Counterfeiting is really a special case in which we could see how our own technology advances were making it easier to commit crimes and we were asked to implement a solution that would have minimal impact on honest customers. Yes, there is some impact, in that you need to contact your central bank for images, but our hope is that it's not a huge inconvenience for that small group of customers who do need to reproduce these images in their graphic design work. It also provides the central banks with an opportunity to better educate customers on exactly what is and isn't legal usage.
Of course, CDS in Photoshop CS is essentially a 1.0 implementation of a feature, analogous to the state of the layers palette in Photoshop 3.0. We realize that there may be room for improvement, particularly if there are corner usage cases that weren't taken into account in our current designs. We do want to hear about your concerns, and we definitely want to hear if there's a specific problem that this implementation has created for you. As with any Photoshop feature, we depend on hearing from customers so that we can make continual improvements release after release."
