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Nikon's photo encryption reported broken (News.com)
News.com
reports that programmer Dave Coffin has successfully broken
a proprietary encryption scheme that is used in some Nikon digital
cameras.
"Because Nikon scrambled a portion of the file, legal worries have kept third-party developers like Adobe Systems from supporting Nikon's uncompressed "raw" photos in their software. Nikon sells its Nikon Capture utility for $100.
"It's an open format now," said programmer Dave Coffin, who posted the decryption code on his Web site this week. "I broke that encryption--I reverse-engineered it."" The application,
dcdraw,
is available for Linux.
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Slashdot DMCA concerns made no sense Posted Apr 21, 2005 19:33 UTC (Thu) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] As an aside, I don't think anyone has to worry about the DMCA here.If the encryption were to be protected under the DMCA as an access control mechanism it would have to be restricting access to a copyrighted work. I don't see any such work here (white point data is a calculated metric with no creativity, it is not a copyrightable work).
Of course IANAL so talk to a real lawyer if you need to be certain.
Slashdot DMCA concerns made no sense Posted Apr 22, 2005 15:52 UTC (Fri) by melevittfl (subscriber, #5409) [Link] Not to mention that, even if it was copyrightable, the copyright would be owned with the person who took the photograph. Unless Nikon is going to try and claim that the own the copyright on some aspect of the pictures you take with their camera.
I'll bet that would go down well.
that was slow... Posted Apr 21, 2005 20:49 UTC (Thu) by havoc (guest, #2261) [Link] Bibble Labs broke it weeks ago. Bibble Pro and Lite are available for Linux.
Am not affiliated with Bibble Labs, but I do use their software.
--
that was slow... Posted Apr 21, 2005 21:50 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] That's radically different thing. After all right now I can easily use Nikon tools (may be not so easy under linux but this is minor inconvenience). But will I be able to use Bibble Pro or Bibble Lite 50 years from now ? Who knows... I can be reasonable sure dcraw will be usable by then (if not directly then after some rewamping). And 50 years in not that long in non-computer world: there are a lot of valuable photos older then that. That is my grief with proprietary formats: they tend to dictate what I can do with my own data. Totally unacceptable. BTW I'm more or less content with things like DjVu or DVD-Video: as long as there are free player available I'm not really concerned with number of proprietary programs needed for creation of data (free creation software is good to have, of course). But free player/reader is a must. And no "free beer" is totally not enough: it may be free today, expensive tomorrow (when hardware to run these "free beer" players will be only available from curiosity shop) and unavailable the day after that. We had a lot of trouble with ChiWriter->TeX conversion just a few years ago - there are no need to repeat this expirience.
I sometimes wonder about this with music Posted Apr 21, 2005 22:53 UTC (Thu) by lakeland (subscriber, #1157) [Link] I can play a wav (/aiff) that was generated ten (or twenty) years agowithout any effort. I expect I will be able to do the same in ten or even one hundred years time. But what about other formats? Anyone remember MOD? What about MOO? MP3? AAC? Will my OGGs be playable in fifty years time after open source has developed a better codec? I suppose with some effort I could ressurect them (though thinking about how hard it is to compile thirty year old cobol code, I can't imagine it being easy). What about FLAC? Perfectly lossless, just ideal for archival storage -- but how are you going to convert it into the newly developed .xyz format? It is hard enough to convert .ape to .flac now, despite both being open formats! Maybe I'm being over-cautious, but I can see ASCII not existing in fifty years as everyone insists on ZUTF (run-length encoded UTF with an index -- I just made that up). I supporse if you're archive.org it doens't matter, you'll have the resources to reimplement the open format. Not all of us have those resources though... The only image formats that'd I'd bet on in fifty years are .jpg (since there are so many), maybe .gif (ditto), and .ppm (only five mins of coding to reimplement it from scratch).
I sometimes wonder about this with music Posted Apr 22, 2005 2:19 UTC (Fri) by komarek (guest, #7295) [Link] I remember MOD. I still keep popcorn.mod around for old times' sake.
-Paul Komarek
I sometimes wonder about this with music Posted Apr 22, 2005 3:11 UTC (Fri) by Mithrandir (subscriber, #3031) [Link] But what about other formats? Anyone remember MOD? What about MOO? MP3?You should check out XMMS.
I sometimes wonder about this with music Posted Apr 22, 2005 9:55 UTC (Fri) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] I hacked Python bindings for a MOD decoder (ModPlug/PyModPlug) a few months ago; there is at least one other active MOD decoder implementation, MikMod (insofar as a decoder for a format nearly static for a decade can be). SID, even older, can still be played by many things (albeit not always your favorite MP3/Ogg player). SPC, the format from the original Nintendo, has a free decoder/player.
If by "APE" you mean MonkeysAudio, that was never an open format; AFAIK the only real spec for decoding/encoding was the reference encoder, which was non-free (with source available if you emailed the author and asked politely).
Open formats beget open players for years to come; sufficient media can compensate for that too, so I don't expect MP3 to go away within the next few decades. AAC is pushing the line, maybe; I definitely don't expect RM or WMA to be playable by 2050.
I sometimes wonder about this with music Posted Apr 22, 2005 19:03 UTC (Fri) by andrel (subscriber, #5166) [Link] Open source decoders for both WMA and ACC exist. For example, VLC can play both of those formats. I often use it to listen to streams.
I sometimes wonder about this with music Posted Apr 23, 2005 2:45 UTC (Sat) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link] I don't know about VLC, but most applications use libfaad for AAC, which recently switched to a GPL-incompatible license (making it pretty useless for a lot of software). And nonetheless, the format itself is proprietary -- patented, often locked down with DRM -- regardless of whether an "open source" decoder exists.
I sometimes wonder about this with music Posted Apr 23, 2005 23:46 UTC (Sat) by xtifr (subscriber, #143) [Link] Why do you think wav is going to be easy forever? Yes, the bulk of the data is raw PCM, but if you don't know how to decipher the header and find the bit-rates, sample size and channels, that's not actually going to help all that much. For that matter, if you don't know that the bulk of the data is raw PCM, you're completely stuck. Wav seems no more or less dependent on our knowledge of the technical details than any other format. With ogg and flac and other free or open formats, the point is that the details of the format are public, and therefore it will be possible to decipher it fifty years from now, even if it's not easy. With a completely proprietary format that gets abandoned, you have NO CHANCE. The difference between possible-but-maybe-difficult and definitely-impossible is pre-e-e-etty significant in my book. And why is converting ape to flac hard? I convert shn (semi-free lossless format) to flac all the time, and I would describe the process as trivial. (Note: "semi-free" is the FSF's term for software that has no-commercial-use clauses in the license, but is free in all other respects.) Bottom line, this breakthrough means that Nikon camera owners no longer have their own data held ransom to the whims of the Nikon corp. In my book, that's an unqualified good thing.
I sometimes wonder about this with music Posted Apr 24, 2005 0:15 UTC (Sun) by lakeland (subscriber, #1157) [Link] WAV is easy because raw PCM is trivial to detect and then process. Evenwithout the specs for wav I expect I could decode the file in a couple hours. Given the specs to OGG I would take _much_ longer, and I wouldn't be able to do it without the specs. By APE to flac, I was referring to the rarity of files. Few people have APEs but those that do are windows-based geeks. Similarly, few people have FLACs but those that do are linux-based geeks. Even though both formats are open, the conversion isn't a simple matter of typing ape2flac (the APE tools are not all open, but the ones relevant here are). In five years time, coming across a single APE file or FLAC file will be an oddity, what's the chance of being able to obtain an ape2flac converter then? Of course, if I were dedicated enough then I could get off my backside and write ape2flac now. Now, my reasoning is potentially flawed; I'm inferring based on what has happened in the past, where better file formats being developed and leaving the old ones to wither into obscurity. I have virtually no tools for processing old file formats, and I wouldn't like trying to find them. However, we now live in a world where everything is just one google away, and so maybe that will preserve the old knowledge/format spec/source code.
using images in 50 years Posted Apr 22, 2005 6:48 UTC (Fri) by tousavelo (guest, #27022) [Link] The point about using the images in 50 years is pretty interesting.
In my eyes, processing a raw image file and creating e.g. a tiff or jpg image is just like bringing your roll of film to the lab and having it developped in some chemistry. Chemical processing is a one-shot non-repeatable process. Digital processing can be repeated "infinitely" in the short term but I am not sure if it will be possible/convenient in 50 (or even 15) years.
When I archive my picture, I make sure that I keep both a .jpg image and the original raw image. It makes me feel that I have a version that will be handily exploitable in the future.
My 2cts
that was slow... Posted Apr 28, 2005 7:20 UTC (Thu) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link] "That's radically different thing. After all right now I can easily use Nikon tools (may be not so easy under linux but this is minor inconvenience). But will I be able to use Bibble Pro or Bibble Lite 50 years from now ? Who knows... I can be reasonable sure dcraw will be usable by then (if not directly then after some rewamping). And 50 years in not that long in non-computer world: there are a lot of valuable photos older then that.
"That is my grief with proprietary formats: they tend to dictate what I can do with my own data. Totally unacceptable."
Precisely. And this is one reason why film (silver grains & dye in emulsion) will never die. No electronics required, no copyright issue except with captured image (belonging to the photographer), any patents long since expired.
Read the website Posted Apr 21, 2005 22:36 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link] > Bibble Labs broke it weeks ago. Bibble Pro and Lite are available> for Linux.
That's nice, but if you were to read the dcraw website you would find that Bibble uses dcraw to decode raw files.
Adobe's legal worries Posted Apr 22, 2005 8:28 UTC (Fri) by bastiaan (guest, #5170) [Link] Adobe knows quite well how the DMCA can be abused to harass innocent programmers, no wonder they are worried.Finally some sweet irony in the Dmitri Sklyarov case :-)
Adobe's legal worries Posted Apr 22, 2005 11:32 UTC (Fri) by pontus (subscriber, #3701) [Link] No matter which end of the stick Adobe are at, the consumers are the ones who end up being hurt. :(
Let your money talk Posted Apr 25, 2005 6:31 UTC (Mon) by MortenSickel (subscriber, #3238) [Link] Please remember, all of you who are going to buy a digital camera. Unless Nikons withdraws their 'encryption', tell the shop owner that, 'Yes I would normally consider a Nikon, I know they are making good cameras, but since they are not allowing me to do as I want with my own pictures, Nikon is a no-op'. Also, after a purchase of a Non-Nikon digicam, make a copy of the receipt and send it to Nikon together with a polite letter telling them why they were deleted from your shopping list. If you want to do some extra work, even pick out wich Nikon model you would have considerer in stead of your purchase and tell them that.
Don't forget the value of information Posted May 2, 2005 2:18 UTC (Mon) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] That could be very effective but also realize that their marketing departmentwould just love all that detailed information about the competition's sales (date, customer name, location, price, method of payment, and which models were considered).
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