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Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

research.googleblog.com

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Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#61

Post by quirkot »

Fiahil wrote: post #51
gknoy wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I put a copyrighted image into an internal presentation, I am still copying and redistributing this image. Without permission to do so, that seems like it's straight-up infringement. I don't believe it usually meets the criteria for fair use, either.

Sure, I do that all the time. But, two things to consider: 1) No one outside of the 5 people attending the presentation will ever know. The 5 colleagues following the presentation absolutely don't care where the images are coming from, as long as the point is clear and I'm speaking loud enough. 2) Redistributing ? Really ? If I'm sending a cat picture to my mom, my manager or my favorite slack channel, I'm "redistrib…

Couple thoughts:

a. Copyright isn't about audience, it's about author. Ask if the person whose work your using would care, not the people seeing it

b. copying is copying every time, not just after the n-th time

c. credit acknowledgement is good, but it doesn't pay the rent for people who work to create content

d. a rough rule of thumb would be whether you're using art to support a profit motive. Anything that happens for your work would be considered in support of a profit motive.

e. "ask" in point a is not used in the figurative sense

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#62

Post by LukeShu »

azdle wrote: post #48
Kdparker wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be easy to change that hash by modifying one pixel per image (pick one that is unaffected by the watermark).

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Change what hash? Of the image? I can't think of how that could help with removing a watermark.

jotato: I believe this can be defeated by tricking the watermarker in to generating 1000 distinct watermarks for the same image.

azdle: That won't work, because "there's exactly one distinct watermark per image, so 1000 of the same image would have the same watermark."

Kdparker: So subtle alter the image, to trick the watermarker in to thinking the image isn't the same, thus generating more distinct watermarks for the (effectively) same image.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#63

Post by s73ver_ »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #58
jakob223 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a malicious person in Guatemala would have to first fly to wherever you live, then throw a brick individually through each window they wanted to break. With smart locks, that same individual can throw tens of thousands of bricks through tens of thousands of windows without even leaving their desk.

But what good does that do if they can't then walk through the door? Also, most smart door locks are operated over a protocol called ZWave which has a limited range. When people talk about smart lock hacking they are usually talking about RF spoofing of the ZWave signal. You can, of course, hack the bridge device if the bridge device is on Wifi.

Uber, but for hackers in remote parts of the world to connect with someone who will go into the building who's smart lock was just hacked and steal the stuff.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#65

Post by Retric »

pps43 wrote: post #43
Retric wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Averaging will still provide the average watermark given a large enough sample set. Which is then a single geometric transformation from the used watermark. Estimating that transformation for a specific image should be fairly straightforward as they could easily reverse a watermark that was offset. At which point it's reversible.

Not really, because in each image parts of the watermark will be in different places. You don't even need to warp the watermark to achieve that, it's enough to randomly reposition it.

Supose you have 4 points on a box. If you randomly increase or decrease the location of each point by some random value say +-3% then averaged 100,000 of those boxes, you get a smaller box(1) surrounded by a larger increasingly blurry box. This is true even if no single picture shows that single smaller box, but it will show up on the average.

(1) Rather than a true box the midpoints are going to be slightly buldging, but with a large sample set it's very close to a box.

Sure, you can get into cat and mouse games ever stranger geometry. But, the water mark is limited by how much it distracts from the image.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#66

Post by HappyTypist »

cs702 wrote: post #45

The researchers identify the watermarks to be removed by finding pixel patterns that persist across a large number of images, as shown on this animation: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cJwNoUxIBzM/WZTDpw3ru6I/AAAAAAAAB... . Their proposed solution is to randomly warp the watermarks. Unfortunately, their solution could be quickly defeated with image-to-image generative adversarial convnets trained to... remove watermarks…

Sounds like we need an adversarial convent for creating watermarks.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#67

Post by isostatic »

icebraining wrote: post #26
nxsynonym wrote: post #4

Thinking out loud here - but would this be a good use case for blockchain technology? The problem with visible watermarks is it detracts from the image visibility. Nobody wants to look at photos or digital art pieces with huge ugly watermarks on them. Could blockchain tech help establish ownership in a way that would make watermarking obsolete? edit: cool - downvotes for asking a question. Real nice guys.

cool - downvotes for asking a question. Real nice guys. I didn't downvote you, but I suspect at this point people are a bit fed up of the constant suggestions of using the Blockchain for everything.

Has anyone suggested using blockchains for comment voting?

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#68

Post by krapp »

isostatic wrote: post #67
icebraining wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cool - downvotes for asking a question. Real nice guys. I didn't downvote you, but I suspect at this point people are a bit fed up of the constant suggestions of using the Blockchain for everything.

Has anyone suggested using blockchains for comment voting?

Probably.

But if you're going to use blockchains for voting, you might as well use them for the whole thing. Every new comment, every edit, every deletion and vote. Consensus as moderation.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#69

Post by QAPereo »

overcast wrote: post #31
FTA wrote: post #19

This reminds me a bit of the common argument for locks: it keeps regular people honest. Watermarks are designed really to deter you from casually copying an image and pasting it on your site, unless you don't care at all about a watermark showing (e.g. a blog site with a few followers). I'm sure a mixture of the original computer vision technique plus some smearing on the original image could wash away even these ran…

This is exactly right, and is also what keeps the casual thief from doing things like copying software. Obviously these can be cracked, but the layman isn't going to deal with, or even know about it. I don't want to get into the "well those people wouldn't have paid for it anyhow" argument. I firmly believe, as much as a hassle as it is, it's preventing proliferation to the masses. Not much to complain about really,…

I think there's this assumption in some quarters that because there is a tradition of very intelligent people, such as MIT alums, knowing how to pick locks that it's essentially a universal skill. I think it also grossly underestimaes the low intelligence, drive, and education of most people who are breaking into a home of an evening.

These are people who are most of the time looking for the open window, the unlocked door, or some other sign of carelessness which they can exploit. Like most predators they're not looking to take down the strongest or the fittest, they're not even looking to take down the average; they're looking for the weak, the sick, the elderly... and they are the biggest victim groups along with criminals themselves.

If you didn't have locks, then most people could break into your house without leaving any indication that the home had been broken into except that they had stolen some of your stuff. A lock means that most people have to either crudely force the lock, break a window, break down the door, etc.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#70

Post by nom »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #50
FTA wrote: post #19

This reminds me a bit of the common argument for locks: it keeps regular people honest. Watermarks are designed really to deter you from casually copying an image and pasting it on your site, unless you don't care at all about a watermark showing (e.g. a blog site with a few followers). I'm sure a mixture of the original computer vision technique plus some smearing on the original image could wash away even these ran…

Whenever they tell me my smart lock can be hacked I respond... "yeah, and someone can also just take a brick, smash my window, and go through that way."

Think about this: What if unsafe web-based locks become more prevalent? What if someone builds a "brick smashing service"? Install the app and run it while driving through $neighborhood until a device is detected. The app comes with filters and only shows locks that haven't been unlocked in the last three days. It shows you the probability of 'someone is home'. You press the 'unlock' button, pay $some_amount in bitcoins and the service unlocks it for you.

Can you see our point now?

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