I did a pilot project together with the SmartFrame guys around 2016 and I remember we also discussed this technical weakness of their DRM back then.
But it turns out, it doesn't really matter in practice. You removing the DRM from the image is a completely different legal aspect than you saving an unprotected JPEG. Circumvention of the DRM is easier to sue for than pure copyright infringement. SmartFrame's business value is that it protects just enough for an IP insurance to cover you, while not slowing things down unnecessarily with better encryption (that won't stop determined techies anyway).
Also, by "recovering" the image in this way, you strip it off IPTC copyright metadata which makes your copy illegal to use in the UK, for example.
> Also, by "recovering" the image in this way, you strip it off IPTC copyright metadata which makes your copy illegal to use in the UK, for example.
Is that still true when there's no copyright on the image?
How could that possibly be enforced? If it were read, stripped out, but then replaced (not altered) would that be okay?
> Also, by "recovering" the image in this way, you strip it off IPTC copyright metadata which makes your copy illegal to use in the UK, for example.
Not sure about the UK but in a lot of countries there are exceptions for interoperability which would nullify this issue since you are converting from an obscure, undocumented and not interoperable format to a standard image format.
Yeah, we did get format shifting but it only lasted a few months until the Tory government reversed it. There's nothing that reasonable in Fair Dealing.
This was always the case with DRM music back in the day, or DVDs after it was cracked etc.
Or, the very much infuriating HDCP that was cracked before being in use and that hasn't stopped anything but legal use. Causing immense frustration worldwide.
(they actually were, but stopped doing so once I pointed out the facts to them.)
I know of two further sites where SmartFrame is being used to stop people "stealing" out-of-copyright images, and to label them as protected by copyright.
This is simply a land-grab, attempting to enclose the (digital) commons.
There's also the fact that, for images that do remain in copyright, there are exceptions in law allowing reuse for study, review, parody etc.
>you strip it off IPTC copyright metadata which makes your copy illegal to use in the UK
I might be mistaken, but that doesn't sound right. Not all formats even support that metadata in the first place. Can you point me to more info on this? Is there UK legislation that refers to such low-level details as image file metadata?
> You're talking about something that's out of copyright? Copyright law doesn't specify anything for out of copyright works.
Yeah, except no. Circumvention of effective protection measures is a separate crime from infringement. If you do it, except for certain specific exceptions, it's a felony punishable by up to five years in federal prison in the USA.
No, in the U.S., the anti-circumvention provisions only apply to works still protected by U.S. copyright. (The criminal violations are also only applicable to willful violations done for commercial advantage or private financial gain.) Generally speaking, the Copyright Clause only empowers Congress to create restrictions "for limited Times" -- even the anti-circumvention rules are probably subject to this.
Nimmer explains: "Section 1201’s limitation to works that are under U.S. copyright protection means that, to the extent a technological measure effectively controls access to public domain works, circumvention of that measure does not violate the statute. (But intermingling a small amount of current material into the collected works of Shakespeare could effectively undermine that status.) By the same token, to the extent that a work, currently protected abroad, resides in the U.S. public domain for formal or other reasons, then, as to it as well, circumvention of technological measures remains nonactionable (unless, again, some protected material were intermingled with it)." 4 Nimmer on Copyright § 12A.03 (2022)
> You removing the DRM from the image is a completely different legal aspect than you saving an unprotected JPEG.
Wait, but if I understood this article correctly... They are saving an unprotected JPEG. Each 256x256 chunk is a separate unprotected JPEG, as can be seen in the network inspector screenshot (it wouldn't show the preview on hover if that wasn't the case). When going through that route, he isn't even working around any kind of copyright protection; saving an image from that screen is normal operation of the software (it isn't even a modified copy of the browser or JavaScript manipulation or something like that).
But it turns out, it doesn't really matter in practice. You removing the DRM from the image is a completely different legal aspect than you saving an unprotected JPEG. Circumvention of the DRM is easier to sue for than pure copyright infringement. SmartFrame's business value is that it protects just enough for an IP insurance to cover you, while not slowing things down unnecessarily with better encryption (that won't stop determined techies anyway).
Also, by "recovering" the image in this way, you strip it off IPTC copyright metadata which makes your copy illegal to use in the UK, for example.