[MRRiley]

A Carnegie Mellon University research project uses advanced computer software to search image libraries (in this case FLICKR) for similar, equivalent or compatible parts of millions of photos which can be used to alter or "repair" a target photo. One example given is that a person wants to erase his ex girlfriend from his photos of Venice. So he identifies her in the program and then it goes looking for photos of the same or similar scene where it can get the imagery which would have been behind her. It then erases her, fills the hole in with the borrowed material and then presumably perfects the transition area to make it less detectable.

Software turns photos from bad to good - Innovation - MSNBC.com

Sounds cool huh, and somewhat useful... However, there are at least 2 problems with this...

1. It is STEALING and probable copyright infringement. Images are copyrighted in whole or in part. You cannot legally take a part of another photographer's copyrighted photo and put it into your own photo even under "fair use" without acknowledging the material from the original photographer. It is doubtful that the program in question will even tell the requesting customer where it got the images or who they belong to.

and

2. It is almost inevitable that someone will use this technology to create doctored images for profit, thus stealing money as well as intellectual property from the original photographer(s)

Now granted, this isn't likely to be a big problem in most cases but the potential for abuse is huge. Some might counter that it is already possible to do this with tools such as Photoshop. Sure it is, but it is a tedious and complicated process which even in skilled hands is detectable to some degree.

(The article itself does recognize and mention the copyright issues but does not say if this was a concern for the researchers)

This might be a nice tool to have if it was restricted to your own image library or to a library where the creators had given up all rights but to open it to search virtually every image on the internet is irresponsible.

Guess this is just one more reason to copyright watermark all of your online images extensively (but then this program could probably be used to remove those too).

Mike

[daacon]

Mike interesting read - I can use it to touch up some the head folicles missing , drop a few pounds and wipe out some lines !

A long time ago back in the day of BBS and when SPAM was only known as a canned "meat by product" a co-worker once told me never to write anything in an email that you would not scream out in a crowded room. I take the same attitude with what I post on FLICKR or anything online and more or less public.

While I agree we all should be concerned and copyright everything (although as you mention that may not be enough) - there will always be someone looking to hack , destroy , edit , modify , steal what ever it is they can get access to. For some it is the 'Why climb a mountain because it is there" attitude and unfortunately for us some of these people are very clever.