Watermark
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News outlets will digitally watermark content to limit misinformation
The BBC and its partners will try and curb fake news, but only in the month before the 2020 US election.
Thanks to Google, Shutterstock can stop automated watermark removal
Stock photos have watermarks to make sure that you don't use them without paying for them. Removing them used to take some Photoshop know-how, but Google found a way to remove them automatically. The team also explained how to counteract the strategy with slightly varied watermarks. According to The Next Web, stock photo purveyor Shutterstock has now reverse engineered and implemented the process to prevent automated watermark removal.
Google figured out how to flawlessly remove stock-photo watermarks
Watermarks are placed on copyrighted images like stock-photos in order to keep people from using them without permission or without paying. And manually removing them requires Photoshop skills, time and being ok with the image not looking its best post-removal. But Google has found a way around watermarks -- work it recently presented at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference.
Cisco says it can cut live pirate video streams
It's relatively easy for content providers to take down pirated videos when they're uploaded to the web, but stopping live streams is another matter. Just ask anyone who has watched a bootleg stream for a pay-per-view boxing match or the Super Bowl -- new streams usually pop up faster than the copyright holders can take them down. The party might soon be over, however. Cisco has created a new technology, Streaming Piracy Prevention, that promises to automatically cut off illegal live feeds.
Photonic Swiss watch engraving might keep counterfeiters at bay
Counterfeit jewelry is a big business. Sometimes the fakes are so convincing that it can be nearly impossible to tell if that Rolex you're eying is the real deal unless you have special equipment or an extremely trained eye. That's something the folks behind DNAwatch want to address. The team has developed a method for imprinting the crystal on Swiss-made watches with a watermark that's invisible to the naked eye, but shows up under ultraviolet lighting.
The Daily Grind: Are MMO beta NDAs counterproductive?
In the last month, Massively staffers (and no doubt some of you readers!) have taken part in several high-profile beta tests, and they all seem to fall into one of two categories: those that guard their games behind NDAs thick enough to protect all the gold in Fort Knox, and those that just don't seem to care. And I've gotta say, when my screenshots come out with watermarks plastered all over them, obscuring what I'm looking at and preventing NDA-breakers from ripping videos, nowadays my gut reaction is not wow, what a well-organized beta but dude, what are they trying to hide? Diablo III's upcoming expansion, by contrast, slipped into closed beta with a wink and a shrug and nary an NDA in sight. Talk about us, Blizzard seemed to say. Screencap us. We're gorgeous. We're ready. But upcoming major MMORPGs give off a terrified vibe, even when they have nothing to be worried about. NDA violators will break their agreements anyway, and the studio relinquishes the control it seeks to retain to exactly the malicious testers it hoped to squelch. What do you think -- are MMO beta NDAs counterproductive? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
World of Warcraft hiding information in screenshots
Like Transformers, there may be more to a World of Warcraft screenshot than meets the eye. Our sister site WoW Insider is reporting that players have discovered hidden watermarks in every in-game screenshot that contains several pieces of information. The watermark is made up of several strips of custom bar codes, which can be decoded to reveal information from the game. While the revealed information isn't extremely personal, it does contain the server IP, player account numbers, and a time stamp. The account number is publically accessable through Blizzard's Armory site and cannot be used to hack accounts. WoW Insider says that this information is most likely used by Blizzard to take down private servers, rogue employees, and cheaters.
Tweet Marker Plus rebranded as Watermark, adds App.net support
Developer Manton Reece is the brain behind Tweet Marker Plus, a US$5 monthly service developed to index tweets and provide search and filtering tools. Now Reece is rebranding the service as Watermark in a move to distance it from Twitter and syncing. According to a post about the rebranding on Macstories.net, Reece is distancing Watermark from Twitter due to the controversy over the changes to that service's API and its strained relationship with third-party developers. While Watermark continues to use the same infrastructure and provide the same functions, it's now a "client and archive tool" that continues to work with Twitter apps that have been designed to support it and that can expand outside of simple Twitter support. Watermark has built-in support for Dalton Caldwell's App.net, a new real-time communication service currently in alpha and priced at $50 per year. Watermark includes an App.net option which pulls in posts from App.net friends and archives all of your posts. App.net is still lacking in many features, but Reece's support of the nascent platform is a good sign of what to expect as more developers embrace the API and as App.net evolves.
Nielsen to use watermarks to enhance local channel rating accuracy
While we're watching our favorite shows in HD, it's easy to forget that they live and die by ratings, and those ratings aren't always collected with the latest technology. In an effort to improve the sample size and accuracy of ratings for local TV channels, Nielsen is starting to roll out a hybrid technology consisting of watermarks and return data from supporting pay-TV provider's set-top boxes, like DirecTV and Charter. The first three markets to get the upgrade are St. Louis, Dallas and Charlotte, with 17 yet to be announced markets to follow in 2013, and finally, the remaining 190 about two years after that. The system will work in parallel with the older Local People Meters and Diaries for three to six months and will lay the groundwork to collect ratings for online, tablets and other platforms. All the inside industry details and more are in the release after the break.
DirecTV's $30 per rental premium video on-demand service launches Thursday
If the actual trip to the movie theater was the only thing preventing you from checking out Adam Sandler, Brooklyn Decker and Jennifer Aniston in Just Go With It, you can still check it out before it arrives on Blu-ray or DVD starting Thursday thanks to DirecTV's new premium video on-demand service. The Hollywood Reporter mentions Sony's flick will be the first one on the service and is already available for preordering on the new Home Premiere service, available only to customers with the satellite company's HD DVRs, which is about 6 million people. As far as DRM, HDMI is required but only a "digital watermarking technology" is mentioned. The next several flicks planned for the service include The Adjustment Bureau (Universal), Cedar Rapids (Fox) and Hallpass (Warner Bros.); they will be available for two weeks at a $29.99 pricetag, in 1080p with 48 hour viewing windows. Movie theater owners don't seem thrilled by the new service, we guess the next question is whether or not you are -- the poll is after the break.
First Look: Watermark your iPhoto pictures with Impression
Blue Crowbar Software is a small Belgian Mac development firm that is quickly making a name for itself for its innovative iPhoto and Aperture plugins. We've previously covered iPhoto2Twitter here on TUAW, and now Blue Crowbar has announced a new iPhoto plugin for adding watermarks to pictures in your iPhoto library. Watermarks are those faint, transparent designs that websites often use to mark exclusive photos when breaking a big story. For example, many of the great fake iTablet "photos" that we've received during the past few weeks have been emblazoned with a watermark for one Mac site or another. Impression (€9.90 -- about US$14.10) works in iPhoto to put watermarks onto your iPhoto pictures. If you're worried that a watermark might ruin a perfectly good picture, don't be. Impression makes a copy of the picture, then creates a watermarked version which is also saved into your iPhoto library.
85 percent of the 14 billion videos downloaded last year were illegal
A new report from In-Stat indicates what we already suspected; because of the ridiculous DRM on digital downloads, most people are opting to obtain content illegally. Consumers will come up with just about any justification because the current offerings from Hollywood are just way too draconian to buy in to. For us that is good news and we can't wait for the video industry to follow the music's lead and give up on all of this overly complicated DRM, that really just doesn't work. Like us, In-Stat believes that watermarking will become the preferred way to control the distribution of digital content. It really is win-win because while consumers are free to use the content as they deem fit, it is very easy for Hollywood to catch up with them if they decide to share it with the whole world.
Audio watermarks let the MPAA know where a recording was taken, but not by whom
We've heard of some crazy audio watermark plans in the past, designed to prevent people from making copies of Hollywood blockbusters, and despite the audio industry finally moving away from its protective restrictions, the film industry seems to just keep working on more. The latest, created by Professor Noboru Babaguchi and his colleagues at Osaka University in Japan, is a means to apply spread-spectrum audio waveforms to a film's multi-channel soundtrack, enabling pirate seekers to determine exactly (well, to within 44 centimeters) where the bootlegger was sitting when he or she committed his or her felonious deeds. Interesting, sure, but unless all theaters worldwide start assigning seats by name it's useless. Beyond that, there's nothing stopping an intrepid recorder from stashing a mic a few feet to the left or the right, thus implicating an idle popcorn-muncher. Will these flaws keep this technology from being implemented? Don't count on it.[Via Slashdot]
Philips spins off watermarking business as Civolution
There's no way that a big company like Philips can keep up with the rag-tag pirates on the interwebs, which might explain why the company has spun off its content watermarking business as Civolution. Not to be confused with TiVolution (which also is showing an increasing desire to watch what you watch), the new company also pulls the Philips/Medialink venture, Teletrax, into the fold to offer up broadcast TV metrics and complete the marketer's tech dream combo. Not great news for bootleggers, but it beats media-crippling DRM by a mile in our book. You didn't really think Philips was going to limit its reach to the hotel PPV circuit, did you?
IGN watermark on Okami Wii strategy guide cover
Lightning does strike twice, and by lightning we mean botched cover art. The Okami Wii box cover wasn't the only victim of the IGN watermark, as it turns out the BradyGames strategy guide also proudly displays the blemish. The automatic reaction to this information would be, "Well, duh! They got the cover from Capcom. So, of course, it'll be there too." Funny thing: The watermark is actually in a different spot. However the error occurred is up for speculation. We just hope this little fiasco urges publishers to supply its designers with the assets to do their job properly. Or, designers should feel free to take assets from us with the Joystiq watermark on them. We totally give permission!
Okami guide also IGN'd?
Apparently IGN is the place to go for high-resolution Okami artwork. BradyGames' Okami strategy guide is also marred by IGN branding -- but a different logo, and in a different place. At first, we thought this was a windup from a tricky Kotaku commenter -- then we looked at the cover on the Brady Games website. Not only does the little D-pad-esque IGN logo appear next to Amaterasu's mouth, this watermark also features "IGN," and you can just see the ".COM" at the end there. Okay, so the Kotaku commenter is absolved -- now we kind of think this must be a joke on the part of the person who made the preview image for Brady's website. If not, we can look forward to some decorative slipcovers.[Via Kotaku]
Uh-Ohkami: Capcom botches Okami Wii box art, inadvertently advertises IGN
With all the work that goes into the designing, writing, and programming of a game (especially for a title as hotly anticipated as Capcom's waggle-infused port of the PS2 under-appreciated gem Okami), we assumed that there would be one person at every video game publisher who would give the final retail packaging a once-over, keeping a keen eye out for any typos, printing errors, or hidden watermarks from popular video game news sites. Then again, maybe that's just us. As is the unfortunate case with the Wii Okami box art -- NeoGAF user Bob Digi discovered that right above a permanent "sticker" promoting the game's high score in Play magazine (an unsightly blemish in its own right) sits a fairly clear IGN watermark, the result of the artwork's background being photoshopped from an image on IGN's Okami PS2 site. Then again, perhaps the game underwent some serious changes in its Nintendo transition, and now features protagonist Amaterasu traveling throughout feudal Japan, devouring the logos of major gaming news sites. [Thanks, Riven.]
Philips' VTrack watermarks content recorded with camcorders
Certainly not the first watermarking scheme we've seen of late, Philips has introduced a new method that it hopes will thwart any plan to snag sensitive PPV material and distribute it illegally on the intarnetz. The VTrack solution, set to debut at NAB Show, is aimed at hoteliers who enjoy offering up PPV films well before the DVD release date. The company will be integrating the technology -- which makes content captured via camcorder traceable -- into its 26-, 32-, 37- and 42-inch HDTVs, and if someone does set up their own bootlegging studio and then share it with everyone on the web, content owners can unearth the time, date and location of the deed. In Soviet Russia (and hotels with Philips sets), content watches you.
Fox internet video, now with watermarks in every packet
The cat-and-mouse game of DRM is probably never going to end, but 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has signed up with USVO's MediaEscort technology to add watermarking to its arsenal. MediaEscort is suited for the growing internet streaming market, and embeds watermarks during content delivery. Thus, if either the legitimate recipient or an online interloper decides to "share the wealth," there's forensic evidence that can be used to figure out both where the leak occurred and how big it is. While we aren't big fans of DRM, it's really because of all the problems it inevitably causes legitimate end-users; watermarking is a different story. As watermarking grows in popularity, we'll see if efforts to strip watermarks grow to the level we currently see in DRM removal.
Canon's eye-based biometric photo watermarking system hits the Patent Office
Image attribution is big business on this tangled web of ours, but embedding digital watermarks into images is a costly and time-consuming procedure for most photographers -- which is why this Canon patent application is so intriguing. The filing describes a "Registration" mode for digital cameras that embeds biometric data captured from your iris in the image automatically as a watermark -- you simply set yourself as one of up to five users, look into the viewfinder for a moment so the camera can scan your eye, and start taking photos. The system embeds the metadata in batches to avoid slowing the camera down while you're out in the field, and it sounds like the system can be modified to simply generate a verification code instead of a true watermark, preserving image quality. Of course, this is just a patent application, so there's no word on when or where we might see this tech pop up, but you know photographers will be all over this when it finally hits.[Via Photography Bay, thanks Eric]
