Bwahh-hah-ha! I recently wrote about the taxpayer dollars wasted on apparently non-counterfeit-resistant counterfeit-resistant currency. Now, it looks like the anti-counterfeit software that the Guvmint spent who knows how much money to develop and surreptitiously insert into Photoshop is also useless:
Almost as soon as word of Photoshop's new anti-counterfeiting provisions started to circulate, users began finding ways around the system...The ease with which people seemed to be eluding the anti-counterfeiting software left some wondering why Adobe had included it in the first place.
The technical and savvy will always triumph over the bureaucratic and weenie-like.
---
AND SO ON:
While writing in the Commentarium for this post, I came across one of the many things that the Guvmint code in Photoshop would prevent if it actually worked: Johnny Burrito's Ugly Money. In fact, the description of the site makes an interesting tangential point:
Since 1998, while running the cash register at Johnny Burrito, I have encountered unsung artists, poets, philosophers & pundits using our national currency as their medium. A cost effective delivery to be seen by many. Few folks would throw away money - offensive or not. I often wonder...what is someone thinking when they do what they do. After several years of collecting, this page was created Feb, 2002.
In this case, currency itself is the mode of expression, but it's not much of a leap to consider images of currency as another mode.
This might also be read as the criminally minded will always triumph over the enforcers of the law. Why in the world would someone bother going to all that trouble (e.g., figuring out ways to circumvent the Photoshop protocols) unless they wanted to counterfeit money? I don't see this as a triumph, merely as an example of how overly entitled this generation of technocrats feels. They're *not* legally entitled to duplicate currency, using Photoshop or any other method - it's not a Web=free speech thing, it's a counterfeiting thing. Gimme a break!
Posted by: Valencia | January 14, 2004 05:00 PM
When I was in 7th grade, I carefully trimmed Washington's portrait from a dollar bill with an X-Acto and pasted it onto the cover of a school report on that president.
If I were in 7th grade today, I might want to do the same thing with Photoshop, but I wouldn't be allowed to.
I agree with Doctorow's take on the symbolic nature of currency. There are any number of reasons to manipulate an image of currency that don't involve counterfeiting.
Want to put Bush's face on a twenty and Photoshop "IN DUBYA WE TRUST" on it? No can do. Suppose you want to produce a better version of a stretched dollar for your website, like this one, or use a bit of a bill as an image for your column, like here. Sorry, nope. What if you're a German obsessed with the Illuminati, like this guy, and you want to use your website examine the occult significance of the pyramid with the big eye over it on the back of US currency? Nein! Verboten.
And let's not forget Johnny Burrito's Ugly Money site. Can't use Photoshop for that anymore, either...at least, you wouldn't be able to if the Government's code was worth a damn.
The point is that this is a shotgun method that a) is totally ineffective and b) interferes with legitimate expression far more than the criminals it supposedly targets.
Furthermore, what we have here is the government secretly supplying computer code to a private sector software developer for the purpose of enforcing its laws, which I find a bit creepy.
Finally, the major point I alluded to in my earlier post: they've spent all this money developing new currency, but haven't figured out a way to add a feature that doesn't scan well. Then, to fix that, they spend more money developing a chunk of code--so secret that even Adobe doesn't know what's in it--and then that doesn't even work.
It's a bad idea, it's bad precedent, and it's bad code.
All in all, a fine example of Government In Action.
Posted by: Ian Wood | January 14, 2004 08:08 PM