Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

research.googleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 98 posts

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#81

Post by baddox »

LukeShu wrote: post #62
azdle wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

If you have the original image, the problem is already solved. If you don't have the original image, then all you will be doing is submitting the watermarked image and having the site apply another random watermark to it.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#82

Post by vxNsr »

userbinator wrote: post #76
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As some one who both owns a DSLR and has a family member with a small business I can tell you very definitively that owning even a good camera and knowing how to take pictures that can be used in marketing materials are two very different things. (I even watched a few photography YouTube channels.... Lol)

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#85

Post by vxNsr »

nxsynonym wrote: post #40
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.

Ugh - if that's the case this place is less open to discussion than I thought. I was honestly curious if it could be a possible application for a technology that people constantly complain has no use. Oh well, keep em coming. The downvotes only make me stronger ;)

But what's the actual implementation? Just suggesting a hot topic might have applications without specificying how isn't really starting a discussion. As other have said watermarks deter unauthorized use, they're not a proof of ownership.

Don't take downvotes so personally, they're more about weeding out bad ideas from good ones than a reflection of your worth to the community, this isn't reddit where we care about karma count. If you fix up your comment instead of complaining you might see those downvotes get reversed (I've had that a number of times).

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#86

Post by chii »

firefoxd wrote: post #84

Sometimes the problem is that you just can't know the copyright on an image. I'll push for this again, https://github.com/ibudiallo/imgcopyright Html has a lot of meta attribute, why not one for copyright.

how can the copyright be verifiable? If somebody copied an image, then put _their own_ copyright attribute on it, who becomes the responsible party when a lawsuit happens when that image is misused?

Bits have no color.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#87

Post by [deleted] »

dtech wrote: post #17

It seems the problem here is that the watermark is transparent, and thus still contains information about the original image. Similar to how if you want to censor a part of an image, you should always use a single solid color because e.g. a blur can be inverted. But I guess that would degrade the quality of the watermarked photo too much.

[deleted]

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#88

Post by maturz »

tyingq wrote: post #38
dtech wrote: post #17

It seems the problem here is that the watermark is transparent, and thus still contains information about the original image. Similar to how if you want to censor a part of an image, you should always use a single solid color because e.g. a blur can be inverted. But I guess that would degrade the quality of the watermarked photo too much.

People do sometimes use small, non transparent watermarks. If they are small enough though, then the person copying just overlays their own. Or uses automated inpainting to approximate what's underneath.

Example of content aware fill for anyone that hasn't seen it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0aEp1oDOI

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#89

Post by Dylan16807 »

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.

It has crisp edges. If the same watermark is repositioned it's trivial to figure out the adjustment and remove it. Warping is harder but still largely doable by finding each part of the watermark's exact location.

Re: Making Visible Watermarks More Effective

#90

Post by avian »

chii wrote: post #86
firefoxd wrote: post #84

Sometimes the problem is that you just can't know the copyright on an image. I'll push for this again, https://github.com/ibudiallo/imgcopyright Html has a lot of meta attribute, why not one for copyright.

how can the copyright be verifiable? If somebody copied an image, then put _their own_ copyright attribute on it, who becomes the responsible party when a lawsuit happens when that image is misused? Bits have no color.

A much better place for such a tag IMHO is in the EXIF block. In fact, such a "copyright" EXIF tag already exists, but isn't commonly used or recognized on the web. Verifiability question remains though.

I wonder if some kind of a decentralized system could be made to automatically register published images, so that first registration could be reliably proven. Not that first publication equates to copyright, but that would solve part of the problem.

Post reply on HN