{"id":11267,"date":"2012-09-12T18:52:50","date_gmt":"2012-09-13T01:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=11267"},"modified":"2012-09-12T18:52:50","modified_gmt":"2012-09-13T01:52:50","slug":"little-brother-big-nanny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/12\/little-brother-big-nanny\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Brother, big nanny"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s what governments are for… get in a man’s way. — Capt. Mal Reynolds<\/i> <\/p>\n

So I did some illustrations for Backwoods Home<\/i> that used money as part of the image. <\/p>\n

One was built around a $20. Got a public domain .jpg of an Andrew Jackson off Wikipedia (serial number already carefully obscured), then manipulated, altered, edited, truncated, artified it. AND I covered it with little drawn figures. Totally legal under every possible rule of use<\/a>. <\/p>\n

All was fine until editor Annie Tuttle attempted to import the illustration into Photoshop to do the final prep to make the art print ready. Here’s what Adobe, in its infinite lack of wisdom, had to say about that:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And that was Photoshop’s final word. No go. Get lost. Never mind that this is an absolutely legal use of an image. Never mind that U.S. currency is by definition public domain. We know better than you and we’re not going to let you do it.<\/p>\n

Annie was laughing about it at first (and she’s the one who gave that screen capture the title “big_brother_hates_art”). Only days later, riiiiight before deadline, did she remember that there was a required step for which she needed Photoshop. Uh oh.<\/p>\n

She shot me an email that sent me scrambling. I discovered (as one commentor had already implied here<\/a>) that this theatrical anti-counterfeiting nannying is common and has been built into printers, scanners, and design programs for years<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Apparently the tech looks for certain graphical “codes” built into currency (this is one of them<\/a>, though not the only one; it’s all very hush-hush, you know). And when it detects them, you’re out of luck even if you’re merely an innocent graphic designer or editor.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, my free, open-source Photoshop equivalent<\/a> and my scanner\/printer haven’t joined the parade of nannies.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, my program, the GIMP, couldn’t do the work Annie needed. At least not without me going out and getting an advanced degree in computer science, finding plug-ins whose developers have done their utmost to hide them from prying eyes, and making multiple sacrifices to a particularly evil and demanding pack of voodoo gods.<\/p>\n

I did find a potential way to fool Photoshop<\/a> into opening the file.<\/p>\n

But by that time, Annie herself had found another way to solve the problem. So 45,000 copies of a “counterfeit $20” — that nobody but a brain-dead Little Brother acting as a government nanny could possibly mistake for an actual<\/i> counterfeit $20 — will soon be heading to BHM subscribers and newsstands.<\/p>\n

Now here’s the good part. Photoshop is made by Adobe. Photoshop says, “No, no, never!” to opening currency art. Right?<\/p>\n

The workaround I found uses another Adobe product<\/i> to persuade Photoshop to open the “counterfeit” art. The fix Annie found uses two<\/i> other Adobe products to get the job done. (Annie: “Our publishing program, by the same company, let us import the bill just fine. Our pdf converter, also by the same company, converted the file fine.”)<\/p>\n

So the takeaway from this is that Little Brothers can be just as obtrusive as the Big Brother on whose behalf they act. And just as short-sightedly incompetent<\/b> at achieving what they say they want to achieve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s what governments are for… get in a man’s way. — Capt. Mal Reynolds So I did some illustrations for Backwoods Home that used money as part of the image. One was built around a $20. Got a public domain .jpg of an Andrew Jackson off Wikipedia (serial number already carefully obscured), then manipulated, altered, edited, truncated, artified it. AND I covered it with little drawn figures. Totally legal under every possible rule of use. All was fine until editor Annie Tuttle attempted to import the illustration into Photoshop to do the final prep to make the art print ready.…<\/p>\n

Continue readingLittle Brother, big nanny<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,11,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-aesthetics","category-government","category-money","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}