Die Joint Photographic Experts Group, die die JPEG-Norm entwickelt hat, traf sich gestern in Brüssel um die Einführung von DRM (Digital Rights Management) in das Format zu diskutieren. Bei DRM handelt es sich um „ein Zugangskontrollsystem, mit der (sic!) versucht wird, Kontrolle über die Fähigkeit des Nutzers auf Material zuzugreifen, zu vervielfältigen, zu übertragen oder zu konvertieren, auszuüben. Die Technologie überwacht also die Nutzung digitaler Inhalte nachdem diese erworben wurden“ (EDRi, Seite 12).
Bereits im Juli wurden Überlegungen des JPEG-Komitees bekannt, einen Kopierschutz zu integrieren. Jeremy Malcolm von der Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) nahm an der gestrigen Sitzung teil und erklärt, wieso die Implementierung von DRM in JPEG keine gute Idee ist:
EFF attended the group’s meeting in Brussels today to tell JPEG committee members why that would be a bad idea. Our presentation [PDF] explains why cryptographers don’t believe that DRM works, points out how DRM can infringe on the user’s legal rights over a copyright work (such as fair use and quotation), and warns how it places security researchers at legal risk as well as making standardization more difficult. It doesn’t even help to preserve the value of copyright works, since DRM-protected works and devices are less valued by users.
This doesn’t mean that there is no place for cryptography in JPEG images. There are cases where it could be useful to have a system that allows the optional signing and encryption of JPEG metadata. […] Currently some social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter, automatically strip off image metadata in an attempt to preserve user privacy. However in doing so they also strip off information about authorship and licensing. Indeed, this is one of the factors that has created pressure for a DRM system that could to prevent image metadata from being removed. A better solution, not requiring any changes to the JPEG image format, would be if platforms were to give users more control over how much of their metadata is revealed when they upload an image, rather than always stripping it all out.