[Digikam-devel] [Bug 268981] WISH: Digital Right Management with integrated steganographic capabilities (write and read).

[Axel Krebs]

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=268981





--- Comment #6 from Axel Krebs <axel krebs t-online de>  2011-03-26 10:22:38 ---
(In reply to comment #4)
> There's probably some confusion here. 
> 
> Since digikam mainly works with open and well-documented image formats which do
> not support this, restricting what a user can do with an image cannot be done
> and any attempts in that direction (aka. the pdf drm limitations) will just not
> work. 
> 
> My interpretation of Axel's request (as digikam user who has been thinking
> about this before) is having a module that generates and recognizes watermarks,
> in particular invisible and robust ones (robust meaning that they survive image
> resizing, cropping, recompression, ...). This of course does not limit what can
> be done with a picture in a technical sense, but it can be used to prove
> provenance, ownership, or copyright claims.
> 
> Unfortunately, to my knowledge there is no open source project covering such a
> topic. Which may also be the case because of patented algorithms...

(In reply to comment #4)
> There's probably some confusion here. 
> 
> Since digikam mainly works with open and well-documented image formats which do
> not support this, restricting what a user can do with an image cannot be done
> and any attempts in that direction (aka. the pdf drm limitations) will just not
> work. 
> 
> My interpretation of Axel's request (as digikam user who has been thinking
> about this before) is having a module that generates and recognizes watermarks,
> in particular invisible and robust ones (robust meaning that they survive image
> resizing, cropping, recompression, ...). This of course does not limit what can
> be done with a picture in a technical sense, but it can be used to prove
> provenance, ownership, or copyright claims.
> 
> Unfortunately, to my knowledge there is no open source project covering such a
> topic. Which may also be the case because of patented algorithms...

Andreas, 

I am not familiar with documentations of several picture formats. Maybe you are
right; but still hesitating to agree, as many raw-formats seem to be
proprietary by camera producers [NIKON: nef, CANON: crw, cr2 etc.). digiKam can
handle these. In spite of their format description is not "open", in many
cases.

Thank you for revising my thoughts about "watermarks". Am I right if I
understand "watermarks" as a _visible_ (!!) mark, one can choose? 
As much as I remember, watermark is in digiKam "a tool to overlay an image or
text as an visble watermark" (context-help in batch processing). Furthermore,
some approbriate "treating" may erase this type of watermark. So, overall, this
is not a satisfying protection in the sense of my suggestion.

The second part of your understanding ("... robust meaning that they survive
image resizing, cropping, recompression, ") fits my intention better. 

(I am not a programming guy as mentioned several times in this tracking system) 

I do _not_ agree to your last sentence, however:

- digiKam integrates external work as in KIPI-Plugins, Kdcraw, etc, provides
interfaces to comercial or copyright protected software services (Marble,
shmug, Facebook, etc.). That is the reason which I assume one can handle the
question of opensource and free availability.

- Why digiKam does not provide an interface to (maybe) comercial suppliers for
Digital Rights Management? The legal background would still remain to users,
not be related to digiKam, I guess.

- Firefox shows free Add-Ons to show the origin of an image. Therefore this is
a matter of common interest. Do you agree?
-- TinEye Reverse Image Search, 
-- Search Image Everywhere

- Is it possible to use merging techniques using free(!) pretty good privacy
(or similar) and `free picture` processed in digiKam?

- Did you check out the links from Comment #2? There are many opensource
projects dealing related topics, as in
<http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Security/Products_and_Tools/Cryptography/Steganography/>
In "worst case", some authors
ahould be willing to support this idea. I mentioned Markus Kuhn, already.

I agree, there might be some work in evaluating these questions in detail. The
resulting chances for digiKam would be huge!

Hope I could answer your questions. Thank you for your considerations


Axel

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