Hi, Last week, the Associated Press reported that Adobe has incorporated anti-copying technology in their Photoshop CS software which prevents users from opening image files of U.S. and European currency. Here's the article: Adobe admits to currency blocker http://tinyurl.com/2xnno (http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11271~1882929,00.html) I did some investigating on my own computer and discovered that HP has also been shipping currency anti-copying software in their printer drives since at least the summer of 2002. I have an HP 130 photo printer and found the string "http://www.rulesforuse.org"; embedded in the driver. According to a few newsgroup messages posted in 2002 and 2003, folks are seeing this URL printed out when they attempt to print images of certain types of bills. An HP printer with this anti-copying technology only prints out an inch of a currency image before aborting the print job. Here is a list of HP printers which appear to have this anti-copy technology embedded in their Windows printer drivers: HP 130 HP 230 HP 7150 HP 7345 HP 7350 HP 7550 I suspect the list of affected HP printers is much longer. I located these printer drivers simply by searching all files in my Windows and Program Files directories for the string "rulesforuse". If other folks run this same experiment, please let me know of other programs which appear to contain currency anti-copy technology. There are some unanswered questions raised by this quiet effort by U.S. and European governments to turn home computers into anti-counterfeiting "cops": 1. Besides graphic programs and printer drivers, what other kinds of software is this currency anti-copy technology being embedded in? 2. Are companies being required to include currency anti-copying technology in their products? If not, what incentives are being offered to companies to include the technology on a voluntary basis? 3. Will future versions of this technology, "phone home" to the rulesforuse.org Web site with details about a violation of the currency copying rules? It would be very easy to include an email address, name of the image file, software version number, etc. embedded in a URL to the rulesforuse.org when a violation has been detected. Richard M. Smith http://www.ComputerBytesMan.com
