Canon's amazing new patent

[poacher]

What do you think of this, a good idea?


Canon is using Iris watermarking to take photographer’s copyright protection to the next level.

. . . to provide an imaging apparatus that makes it possible to protect the copyright of photographic images by reliably acquiring biological information of a photographer . . . - US Patent Application No. 2008/0025574

http://www.photographybay.com/2008/02/09/canon-iris-registration-watermark/

 

[soupdragon]

It's an interesting idea but, it will be a reason for me not to buy Canon.

 

[Raymond Lin]

wow !

But does it only register your iris when you put your eye up to it, or only the first time.

Either way, if it only register the watermark when you put your eye up to it then people can still argue over who took it. If its the latter, then it can only prove that you own the camera at one time, what if you sell it on and the new user never "re-register" ?

 

[Darryn]

It's an interesting idea but, it will be a reason for me not to buy Canon.

Why?

What am i missing that makes this wacky new bit of tech a reason to not buy a camera with it on?

Personally at my level of photography its pointless, i dont take any shots which are worth stealing, so rarely even both putting my name/watermark on them anyway.

 

[shrimperblue]

Big brother is watching you!!!

They will want your DNA next. Then i'll be getting framed for a murder in Vegas when I was in Southend On Sea cos someone stole my camera at the airport lol

SB

 

[Alistair]

Anything which helps a photographer retain copyright/ownership of his or her images is great, whether that is of use to many of us, is another question entirely.

I had to visibly watermark all the images on my website after finding numerous images on many other websites, or linked to without credit.

 

[Chappers]

How this will finally be implemented is not clear. If you need complicated decoding equipment then it may well be a non starter. However if an authentication code can be added to the file then that would help.

I do wonder if this is not a bit overkill. Maybe just embedding a unique camera ID in the file would suffice. e.g. Camera serial No, date, time.