Wired News: Currency Detector Easy to Defeat

Last week, there was a big uproar about the fact that Adobe has included anti-counterfeit measures in the latest version of Photoshop. This morning Wired News has a story about the various ways people have gotten around the technology.

Almost as soon as word of Photoshop's new anti-counterfeiting provisions started to circulate, users began finding ways around the system. Digital artist Kiera Wooley circumvented the restrictions simply by cutting and pasting a bank-note image from another graphics utility into Photoshop. Advertising agency creative director Ann Shelbourne found she could save a bank-note image in an earlier version of Photoshop and open it without trouble in Photoshop CS. Other Photoshop CS users said they had successfully imported bank-note images by invoking Photoshop from another Adobe product or by scanning an image in pieces and reassembling it in Photoshop.

I really think that this kind of tech is pointless. I have never seen a case where anti-anything technology actually stopped that thing from happening. We all remember what has happened with copy-protected CDs, people used felt-tipped markers to defeat them. E-Books, a Russian company made a product that broke through Adobe's encryption. Really, I just don't get it. I think you have to trust people to make the right decisions. Educate them about what is and is not acceptable, and then let them do their own thing. This kind of arms race is unproductive and will lead to bad code.