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So here's a startup idea that can help with that. 1) Build a library for hiding encrypted information inside images. It should be hard to detect (indistinguish

So here's a startup idea that can help with that. 1) Build a library for hiding encrypted information inside images. It should be hard to detect (indistinguishable from random) and robust (e.g. survive printing and scanning). 2) Build a web crawler, coupled with a key store. Crawl the internet for images that contain our encrypted info. 3) The copyright owners will be our paying clients. They will display images only to logged in users, use our service to embed the user information in the image, and deposit the encryption key with us. 4) Whenever the crawler finds a stolen image, we notify the copyright owners and send them the details of the user who leaked it. We don't notify the user, of course. Right?

rasur 12y ago
>for hiding encrypted information inside images. otherwise known as Steganography.
aragot 12y ago
I was under the assumption that image/theme services did that already, especially with website themes? That may be an idea for a copyright troll, btw. Disseminate not-for-commercial-use for free, then charge dozen of thousands of dollars when infringement is found.
- AlyssaRowan 12y ago
  I gather there was a distinct suggestion that at least one infamous copyright troll had done something like that because the only place their content had ever been found was on The Pirate Bay, uploaded by them, which they subsequently threatened users for downloading. (You can guess how well that turned out for them.)
AlyssaRowan 12y ago
It seems to me that you've basically described Digimarc®'s business model.
- cousin_it 12y ago
  Hah! Yes, you're right.
colanderman 12y ago
Blizzard does this: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/watermark-screenshots-World-of-warcraft-digimarc-MMORPG,17522.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/watermark-screenshots-World...
- AlyssaRowan 12y ago
  Sneakily, Blizzard did (does?) that to include an account ID, seemingly so that they could catch people exploiting and then proudly posting screenshots (but editing out their character name). I've got to hand it to them, that is sneaky, but a bit underhanded. And you could sort of see something was a bit off in screenshots of the more gradiented blue skyboxes (in which it was more visible), but I'd thought that was just a poor JPEG encoding routine, until someone looked closer of course.
breischl 12y ago
You could just use TinEye[1], which looks at the actual image data to find copies. I know some artists use it to track down illegal copying, but I'm not sure how accurate and effective it is. http://services.tineye.com/TinEyeAlerts http://services.tineye.com/TinEyeAlerts

rasur 12y ago

>for hiding encrypted information inside images. otherwise known as Steganography.

aragot 12y ago

I was under the assumption that image/theme services did that already, especially with website themes? That may be an idea for a copyright troll, btw. Disseminate not-for-commercial-use for free, then charge dozen of thousands of dollars when infringement is found.

AlyssaRowan 12y ago
I gather there was a distinct suggestion that at least one infamous copyright troll had done something like that because the only place their content had ever been found was on The Pirate Bay, uploaded by them, which they subsequently threatened users for downloading. (You can guess how well that turned out for them.)

AlyssaRowan 12y ago

It seems to me that you've basically described Digimarc®'s business model.

cousin_it 12y ago
Hah! Yes, you're right.

colanderman 12y ago

Blizzard does this: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/watermark-screenshots-World-of-warcraft-digimarc-MMORPG,17522.html http://www.tomshardware.com/news/watermark-screenshots-World...

AlyssaRowan 12y ago
Sneakily, Blizzard did (does?) that to include an account ID, seemingly so that they could catch people exploiting and then proudly posting screenshots (but editing out their character name). I've got to hand it to them, that is sneaky, but a bit underhanded. And you could sort of see something was a bit off in screenshots of the more gradiented blue skyboxes (in which it was more visible), but I'd thought that was just a poor JPEG encoding routine, until someone looked closer of course.

breischl 12y ago

You could just use TinEye[1], which looks at the actual image data to find copies. I know some artists use it to track down illegal copying, but I'm not sure how accurate and effective it is. http://services.tineye.com/TinEyeAlerts http://services.tineye.com/TinEyeAlerts