Photoshop rips heavy cultural symbols out of artists' phrasebook

Photoshop CS automatically detects images of US currency and prevents the manipulation, copying and pasting of same. When my grandfather was in hospital with Alzheimer's, one of his major causes of anxiety was money, but we could soothe him by giving him $20 "bills" we ran off an inkjet (fakes easily detected by anyone not suffering from senile dementia). The images on the US dollar, being a product of the US government, are not copyrightable.

The images on US currency are among the most ubiquitous in our society. They are freighted with heavy symbolism, and have constituted part of the artistic vocabulary of visual artists for generations. Thanks to Adobe's decision to exercise prior restraint over its customers -- to punish the innocent to get at the guilty -- currency images have been ripped out of the photoshopper's artistic phrasebook.

If we ever needed an example of the idea that "architecture is politics" and that "code is law," here it is.

And as if that wasn't enough, the scanning of all images for content reportedly creates a massive performance hit in Photoshop, as your CPU's cycles are hijacked to police your lawful activity. Link (via MeFi)