Stop, you counterfeiter

Isn’t this an interesting example of making criminals of us all: the new version of Adobe Photoshop will not allow you to scan, open, or manipulate images of U.S. banknotes.
Using Photoshop CS to open this publicly available image of the $20 bill (from the U.S. Treasury site) yields an alert:

This application does not support the unauthorized processing of banknote images.

For more information, select the information button below for Internet-based information on restrictions for copying and distributing banknote images or go to http://www.rulesforuse.org.

Doing exactly that takes you to the U.S. Secret Service website, which states:

The Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-550, in Section 411 of Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations, permits color illustrations of U.S. currency provided:

1. the illustration is of a size less than three-fourths or more than one and one-half, in linear dimension, of each part of the item illustrated;

2. the illustration is one-sided; and

3. all negatives, plates, positives, digitized storage medium, graphic files, magnetic medium, optical storage devices, and any other thing used in the making of the illustration that contain an image of the illustration or any part thereof are destroyed and/or deleted or erased after their final use.

So, in other words, the U.S. government says that I can use currency provided I follow those rules. But Adobe is enforcing a law that’s all their own.
Two things about this: first, this is yet another example of the hysteria that is making criminals of every consumer, from people who make copies of music to people who record television programs. Second, it’s interesting that the program can recognize banknotes. I wonder if this has something to do with the recent redesign of U.S. currency? Is there something in the money that triggers this? Is this one of the “additional anti-counterfeiting measures” that have been kept secret? In fact, the Treasury website says: “Also, a machine-readable feature has been incorporated for the blind. It will facilitate development of convenient scanning devices that could identify the denomination of the note.”

More on this knee-jerk nonsense on slashdot.

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[More on this from CNet – Adobe speaks.]

Update: CNet reports that the technology behind this was developed by Digimarc, which explains how it works. Digimarc is the company that provides “watermarks” in images which can be decoded by a computer even if the image is cropped, scanned, or photocopied. The Digimarc plug-in has been embedded in Photoshop for some time now. Anyone can register with Digimarc, which then allows them to embed a serial number or code in their images using the plug-in. The code is embedded by use of a sort of 3D bar code that takes advantage of the detail in the image to make it invisible to the naked eye. It’s pretty cool, actually. Anyway, this is what I figured the Treasury was using – a Digimarc watermark in the $20 bill, embedded in the details.