Non_Open Source materials being embedded in OS stacks/standalones.

[Mark Wilcox]

The fancy techniques which watermark videos and images by hiding something in the image data itself exist because they are extremely hard to detect and thus remove. If you simply open the image with a hex editor and type in your copyright details then someone else can open it in their hex editor and remove them again. :)

The really smart ones have lots of redundant copies of the watermark data added in such a way that they survive scaling and de-compress/re-compress cycles.

Personally I think it's all daft (DRM in general) - with a few rare exceptions you'll either not be able to track and police violations effectively or spend far too much time doing so that could be much better spent creating new stuff for the people that want to pay for it rather than worrying about the ones that don't.

To return to the original question - it's not completely clear cut when it comes to distributing copyrighted images with restrictive licenses with GPL'd code. In many forms of software distribution the images would not be considered "linked" with the code by the GPL but rather the combined distribution is "mere aggregation" - which would free them from having to conform to the same license terms, thus you can distribute them with their own separate license terms. LiveCode stacks that include the images within the stack file itself might be on shaky ground here. An external image file that's directly referenced by name is probably a bit of a grey area (most stuff related to the GPL hasn't actually been tested in court). Code that searches a specific directory and displays whatever images it finds there of appropriate sizes is almost certainly fine. There are a number of open source games which distribute the code under an OSS license and the graphical and
 audio assets either under a restrictive license or not at all (they tell you how to get them instead) because the game authors don't have the rights to distribute them.

Mark


________________________________
 From: Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com>
To: How to use LiveCode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> 
Sent: Saturday, 13 April 2013, 21:53
Subject: Re: Non_Open Source materials being embedded in OS stacks/standalones.
 
On 04/13/2013 11:43 PM, stephen barncard wrote:
> that is not the same thing.  The PS plugin uses another technique to
> invisibly imbed the code in the photo.
>
> Gimp and others use a graphic overlay, which degrades / cheapens / uglifies
>   the image.

You are quite right.

But, how, if the code is invisible can it be seen by those who wish to 
check if the image is copyrighted or not?

-------------------

Of course, one could open an image with a hex editor and type in one's 
copyright details
and save it again, and that would serve.

https://apps.ubuntu.com/cat/applications/bless/  { just tried that, and 
it is fine ]

Richmond.