Canon Files For DSLR Iris Registration Patent

An anonymous reader writes "Canon has filed for a patent for using iris watermarking (as in the iris of your eye) to take photographer's copyright protection to the next level. You set up the camera to capture an image of your eye through the viewfinder. Once captured, this biological reference is embedded as metadata into every photo you take. Canon claims this will help with copyright infringement of photos online."

Genius idea

[xigxag]

I don't know that it will achieve its intended purpose, but nevertheless, as a concept, that is shockingly genius in its elegance and simplicity. Damn you Canon, for not waiting for me to come up with it first.

It strikes me that the patent system is much like Slashdot in that only one person gets to shout "First Patent!" whilst everyone else with the same idea is downmodded to oblivion.
 

Nothing to do with copyright

[SuperBanana]

Canon has filed for a patent for using iris watermarking (as in the iris of your eye) to take photographer's copyright protection to the next level.

No, putting your photos on a CD or DVD and then following these instructions [copyright.gov] takes it to the next level. It helps that a)you have the RAW files and nobody else does and b)most cameras encode their serial number into the EXIF data (or similar for a RAW image), and if you have proof of ownership of said camera...

I didn't see anything in the patent summary provided by the linked site that related to ease of copyright enforcement. Just:

Alternatively, by embedding personal data which is biological information in the image of a subject as an electronic watermark, falsification can be prevented more robustly.

Wow, you don't say. We can do that now- it's called Digimarc. They'll even crawl the web for you and look for images with your Digimarc watermark. Too bad it costs about a zillion dollars- their pricing model means that only a small number of pros use it (and you pay for both per-image watermarking, AND the services like web crawling.) This technology is sufficiently expensive and limited in scope to mean that it will never make it into anything except the 1D series cameras- it probably wouldn't even make it into the _0D series.

I really don't see an application for this technology, except for *maybe* press agencies, where they want to (more) easily track who took what photo. This is a fairly painless way of doing so; you no longer need to track who has what camera (Canon and Nikon provide loaners for repairs and loaners for special events, which means that no, it's not 1 person, 1 camera. Pro's also often shoot with more than one body.)

Though really, they could do the same thing with a microSD slot (where shooting preferences could be stored, too) for a lot cheaper. The only thing this gets them is more "proof", maybe- if they can somehow provide tamper-proof metadata (supposedly, the "data verification kit" from Canon provides verifiable images, but I've never seen even the most basic description of how it works.)

Loss of resolution

[UnderCoverPenguin]

So, the raw image (or high resolution JPEG or other) is watermarked. Seems to me that when the original image is re-encoded for publication that detail will be lost.

Re:uh

[fireman sam]

Or worse. Your camera gets stolen and is used to photograph illegal activities. The images are then posted on the net with your watermark on them. Cops arrive at your door and your life is history.

Re:metadata

[jimdread]

BUT... this doesn't remove the original image, which a photog can take into court proving that it's his... now where's your 2-zillion x 1.5 zillion rez RAW image w/ the steganographic retina scan (and all the other related images showing similar scenery), to match the one he's using in court against you to prove original ownership?

Suppose you produced an image by doing conversions from one format to another, starting with some photographer's original image. Does the photographer hold the copyright for this derivative image? The photographer might have some image which looks pretty much the same, with a watermark of his iris in it. But does he have the original of the image being complained about? The photographer doesn't have the generated image, because you produced that image yourself.

How different does one image have to be from another image before copyright on one image doesn't apply to the other one? Do the images have to look different to the eye, or do they just have to look different to a computer program like "diff"? What if you do a bit of cropping and run a few filters over the photographer's image. Does the photographer have copyright over the image you make? If you remove the watermark from an image, is that enough to make it a different image according to copyright law?

Re:uh

[dgatwood]

Yeah, but as soon as the patent describes the technique publicly, it would be possible to extract the metadata block from someone else's photos, use the same technique with that data, and extort money from someone, e.g. "Don't want these photos of kiddie porn signed with your iris? Put ten million dollars in non-consecutive unmarked bills in a brown paper bag under the mailbox at 5th and Rochester."

Am I missing something?

Re:Tagged "gay"?

[azakem]

Fight back, tag !gayyouhomophobicbastard

an easier yet better method

[FudRucker]

just put your signature on a piece of paper, scan it with a flatbed scanner and save as a couple of the popular file formats used for computer graphics (jpg, png, gif) then resize them small enough to not be noticed and paste them on to your photos you want copyrighted/trademarked whatever, then nobody will know they are there unless they zoom in to 400% and look for the signature in a specified location, but since you keep all that your own little secret nobody knows they are there unless you need it to defend your self in the court of law...

Re:uh

[Idiot with a gun]

Now that I think about it, that's a good point. There are ways to hide watermarks, and make them difficult to find/remove, but they tend to degrade signal/noise ratios (not good for a camera, at least of professional quality. Most pocket cameras I know have plenty of noise to hide the watermark in), and it'd be a fairly CPU intensive process inserting it. So, you have a point there.

Re:menu option?

[countSudoku()]

Not to mention the obvious:
Enable Camera Password?[YES][NO]

Encrypt the iris store in the camera... problem solved... next?

Re:uh

[AmigaMMC]

Maybe you don't, but as a pro photographer I do want to be able to track every photo that I think belongs to me. Do you really think that anyone has access to the data? You can have one of my photos that doesn't mean you'll be able to know it's mine. On the other hand, I see a photo posted somewhere on the net and I can run my software to see if it is really mine. Luca

Re:Sweet

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Most people who use canon stuff also have photoshop or something like it - should be interesting to see how the watermark fares after the image is processed. Likewise, it'll be interesting to see how the watermark affects the actual image.

Re:uh

[AmigaMMC]

Yeah, that's well-thought. If my camera is stolen how the heck are they going to put my eye in the viewfinder to watermark their photos?

Don't look into viewfinder with remaining eyeball

[billstewart]

I'd much rather set the metadata to some passphrase of mine which I can choose for the occasion than be stuck with at most two sets of metadata for all my pictures. Or if I really wanted a biometric, a voiceprint would be more useful (because I could say something like "Washington DC, Nov 5, 2008" or whatever useful tagging I want.) Or even a thumbprint would be better than my eyeprint.

And then there's that James Bond movie scene ....

Re:uh

[Anonymous Coward]

> Unless you are just trolling, this is definitely one of the more tin-foil-hat posts I've seen on Slashdot in a long time.

Google "EFF inkjet printer dot code tracking", or some variation on the theme.

The thin edge of the wedge was the implementation of watermarks on color photocopiers (and the implementation of currency recognition standards in scanner firmware and drivers), ostensibly to deter counterfeiters. Try to scan a dollar bill and your scanner drivers will scream bloody murder. Try to photocopy one on a cheap copier, and it'll fail. Try it on a sufficiently sophisticated printer, and it'll "break" (and a "repairman" will show up to ask about who was using it when the printer phoned home). Counterfieting is economic warfare, and frankly, that wasn't a bad compromise between liberty and security. But as predicted on Slashdot at the time, every printing device now watermarks its output, no matter what's being printed. (Bit late now to complain, isn't it? What are you gonna do, print off flyers and organize a protest? Wait... whaddya gonna print it with? :)

Explain to me how this is any different? One day it's an "option" in the high-end DSLR firmware. Next year it's turned on by default in the midrange. Couple years down the road, it'll be standard. Year after that, it'll be illegal not to ship a camera with the iris-based tracking system.

Glad this is not in place yet.

[Shadowlore]

So your photographer gets laser surgery and due to the differences in the outer part of the eye the signature is different and now they don't match their old photos? Yes, LASIK (for example) doesn't affect normal iris scans because those use IR to scan the iris itself. But this apparently takes a picture of the eye. And yes a picture can be affected by eye surgery.