I was perusing this week's Network World magazine and came across the following article by Mark Gibbs. This is some scary stuff! It seems to apply only to Photoshop CS, but who knows? Adobe was not very forthright in their admission. Read on...

"The oddest thing to catch my eye so far this year was in a note I received from longtime
reader Keith Krebs (aka "Just some guy"). Krebs wrote that users of Adobe's Photoshop CS
package were finding that the software seemed significantly slower than it should be when opening files.The reason turns out to be pretty interesting ...

Before the facts came to light a lot of people were scratching their heads and making wild
guesses, but Adobe had nothing to say. The truth started to emerge when a user in Adobe's
Photoshop forum described receiving a TIFF image of a $20 bill from a customer. The user
noted that the image did not violate the laws regarding reproduction of currency for several
reasons, not the least of which was that the image was not even a "flat" portrayal; it was
rendered as if it were a flag fluttering in the wind, and the colors weren't even close to
those of a real note.

Well, to make a long story short, it turns out the slow-loading problem is caused by
Photoshop CS attempting pattern recognition on all images as they are loaded. If the program recognizes the image as a bank note it refuses to open the file and displays an error message about the legality of currency reproduction! Krebs and others did some tests and found that currency detection only applies to the new $20 and $100 notes and some U.K. pound notes.

And then, on Jan. 11, Adobe'fessed up: It had indeed included a bank note image-detection
subsystem, but - and here's the really interesting bit - it had not written the code. And as far as I can find out neither did it inspect the sources! Yep, you read that right: It incorporated third-party code without knowing exactly what it does or how it does it. The embedded technology was apparently designed and built by a consortium of 27 central banks in the U.S., England, Japan, Canada and the European Union called the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group. To see where the political drive comes from consider that in the EU there is a proposal for legislation requiring all software companies to include similar anti-counterfeit technology.

Adobe isn't alone in this; I just found out that Jasc Software's Paint Shop Pro 8 does the
same thing. But the Photoshop CS implementation is hardly effective. It appears that you can
get around the detection system by using several simple methods, including cutting the image of the bank note from another graphics utility and pasting it into Photoshop (a Homer
Simpson moment if ever there was one:" D'oh!").

There are some aspects to worry about in this story. Adobe's new End User Licensing
Agreement for the product reads "14.8.1 The Software may rely upon or facilitate your access
to Web sites maintained by Adobe or its affiliates or third parties offering goods, information, software and services." Hmm, can you say "spyware"? Is the detection code reporting to some server each time it blocks an image from loading?

Now I don't think any of us upstanding citizens have any objection to the idea of
anti-counterfeiting technologies; counterfeiting is an enormous and serious worldwide
problem, but this system can never work. You can never get all graphics software available
for example GIMP) to incorporate this functionality, and just locking down the market leader's packages can never solve the problem (to misquote the old saw:"when unmodified
image editors are outlawed, only outlaws will have unmodified image editors").

Politics now are starting to try to change how software works, and the potential for introducing serious stability functional and security problems is not to be taken lightly If this becomes an established practice, what other detectors and limitations will be built into our software by law? Makes you wonder what other additional code you might already be
running that you know nothing of. Paranoid thoughts to backspin@gibbs.com."

Scary, I wonder if AutoCAD 2000 has anything like that......

New software sucks.

Interesting find BA.

I had a discussion not long ago with some friends about pretty much the same topic (or the future likelihood of it happening), after watching a tv segment pertaining to counterfeiting.

I believe its only been implemented into the newest released software from the major contenders out there, but it would be my bet there's a good chance of it being trickled into older versions via updates/patches.

I pretty much know from past experience, that the apps I own (PS 7, & PSP 5, 6, 7) dont have the implemented protection.

I have PSP 8 also, but havent tried it out yet. I'll try to get it installed later and do some scanning...lol

Damn.... Now while I don't argue that they may indeed have good cause for inserting such deterrents, I still find the thought creepy. Not to mention that if publishers get onto this bandwagon (such as magazine publishers) it could quickly slow your machine to a halt. Can't say I like the idea of needing a processor upgrade just so I can actually open my apps.

Makes me glad that I haven't gotten above PS 7. Great find BA! If when I get newer software from now on I think I will install it first on my soon to be "secondary" rig.
That way I can get a better idea if any such implementations have been introduced before installing on my main rig.

wow thats pretty crazy

Its really interesting that they did that , although on Canadian money they have that shiny metallic stuff anyways, I didnÂ’t even notice and differences in loading with cs, but then again my computer sucks

There is already a patch to bypass this...I have tested it and it works.

Wow, thats interesting. Good find

My PS8 had been acting freaky lately anyway, so I backed down to PS7. I'm going to investigate Me-Two's patch more before I install again.

Not only are there patches but there are many many many easy non software ways around the anti-counterfit program. Also this was on TechTV not long ago but they didnt mention anything about the third party code or the EULA, that is the real scary part...

I have a friend who clings to old software, despite the advantages of upgrades. I think I'm starting to agree with him. The more complex the code, the easier it is to hide features.

(*hugs copy of PS7)

Now thats scary. I can just Imagine what they are loading in to longhorn seing as it is supposed to have many anti Pirating technologies built in!

Year old post Batman!

Anyone hear any follow up to this? I remember this story and something the mint did with electronic copying and whatnot and never heard what ended up happening or if anything more came of it.

I use Photoshop CS! But I've never imported an image of a $20. One thing noticable is the load time like the article says.