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Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

research.googleblog.com

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Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#71

Post by krapp »

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…

>I'm sure a mixture of the original computer vision technique plus some smearing on the original image could wash away even these randomly perturbed watermarks.

Absolutely. When I did graphics for a local TV news station, I got very good at quickly cloning away the watermarks on stock photos. Visibly watermarking an image is, at best, a nuisance that deters the lazy.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#72

Post by toast0 »

QAPereo wrote: post #69
overcast wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The ease (or lack thereof) of picking locks isn't the issue. Forced entry isn't very hard for many (possibly most) homes. As a person with a home, I guess it's nice that forced entry makes it obvious that an unauthorized person has been in my house, but missing belongings would be pretty obvious too.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#73

Post by cakedoggie »

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.

Oh yeah, definitely. Just like blockchain technology should be used to remove the pot holes from the road near my house, or my computer battery dying.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#74

Post by QAPereo »

toast0 wrote: post #72
QAPereo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The ease (or lack thereof) of picking locks isn't the issue. Forced entry isn't very hard for many (possibly most) homes. As a person with a home, I guess it's nice that forced entry makes it obvious that an unauthorized person has been in my house, but missing belongings would be pretty obvious too.

Missing belongings are obvious to the homeowner, and if that homeowner has insurance including those items named specifically, and your insurance company believes your story. As it stands now broken locks, broken windows, broken doors also serve as evidence that a crime was committed. At that point your insurance takes over if you have insurance, otherwise that's pretty much it most of the time. I don't think you'd like to see what would happen if you try to sell to police and insurance the notion of bandits was only sign of being in your home was the absence of some of your belongings.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#76

Post by userbinator »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #41
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…

Indeed. But the practice has somewhat backfired. Some members of the general public now erroneously believe that any image lacking a watermark is a public works. For one specific anecdote, a local popular bar lifted an image of their establishment found on Flickr and used it in their marketing materials (posters mostly). When contacted about this by the photographer, the establishment claimed due to the lack of water…

It's odd that, in this day and age of ubiquitous and cheap yet very good cameras, the owner or one of the employees didn't just take the photo themselves.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#77

Post by estebank »

droidist2 wrote: post #75

Didn't Google invent this watermark defeating mechanism? So they're proposing protection against an attack they created?

It is a trivially reimplemented mechanism. This is not an attack that needs Google scale to be feasible and just like videogames and DRM, once the "crack" exists the technical ability needed to exploit it approaches 0.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#79

Post by pps43 »

Retric wrote: post #65
pps43 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The article shows the result of this approach, and it clearly does not work well.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#80

Post by colejohnson66 »

lightbyte wrote: post #20
jotato wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what would happen if I took 1000 copies of the same image that is using a warped mark and ran it through the algorithm....

The algorithm is calculating the mean of the set of images, so putting 1000 copies of the same image will do absolutely nothing

Couldn't I run the result through Photoshop with some "Content Aware Fill" on the remaining spots?
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