Yup, that was my first thought too: people will probably have the idea of using the tool to remove watermarks on their own anyway, but by giving it as an example you are putting yourself in the line of fire.

That sequence can be easily replaced by some other neutral text like "Lake Tahoe" instead of "Copyright" and still most users would get it.

Why does that sound familiar? Was that in a postcard picture from back to the future or something?

That's welcome to Hill Valley you're likely thinking of. https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/3/106917/1368185/Hill%...

Ah that’s a sharp eye!!

Why would this cause legal issues? (assuming the author owns the rights to the images shown in the preview)

I can think of two related topics:

* Export restriction on encryption (does not apply here)

* YouTube's content policy on hacking tutorials (not applicable here either, since this is not YouTube)

There are different forms of secondary liability for copyright infringement: https://matthewminer.name/law/outlines/3L/1st+Semester/LAW+6...

Particularly, inducement liability could be a real issue here.

In MGM v. Grokster, the Supreme Court unanimously said, "[O]ne who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."

I've often wondered if I could get Apple computers sued by ripping CDs with iTunes and sharing the results (ripping is copy infringement in the UK, the media companies had the government remove format-shifting rights and we don't have Fair Use [our Fair Dealing is very conservative]).

No, because you can rip CDs containing stuff under some creative commons license or some other license that permits copying.

You probably can't sue a knife maker because you killed someone with one of their knives. My knives usually cut vegetables and tofu, which is allowed as far as I know.

It gets complicated, you can obviously use any 'hacking' tool for red team operations, but tools that are published and were designed for such hacking (cracking, intrusion) still appear to be subject to legal control (in Europe; I guess like how encryption tools that are subject to defence controls in USA can obviously be used for non-nefarious purposes but it's still illegal to export them [or was in the past---browsers used to hobble the encryption built it---I think still is?]).

Similar here, but worse than the knife/tool analogy: when you rip a copyright CD the system gathers all the data on the CD to present in the interface but doesn't warn you about the copyright; it is designed to rip commercial, copyrighted music.

Some time ago, youtube-dl, a downloader tool for YT, faced legal troubles from RIAA simply for showing a copyrighted video URL in a demo. Something about anti-circumvention. [1]

Given that this project is an alternative to Adobe's features, the latter may feel tempted to claim this is a tool intended for copyright circumvention.

[1]: https://commonsware.com/blog/2020/10/24/youtube-dl-avoiding-...

Because it doesn’t need to be illegal to cause legal issues. All it takes is one wealthy enough, persistent enough, annoyed enough plaintiff, to make your year extremely shitty.

LOL there are plenty of people like that

I say the opposite. At first I didn’t care much for the removal of people, but taking watermarks out of images had me sold.

Thank you @xwdv! Watermarks are certainly one of the main use cases.

Thanks for pointing out, it’s indeed our own edited photo from Lake Tahoe. Will swap the word with “watermark”. Appreciated!

removing watermarks does not remove the copyright...

No, but it can aide infringement (just as torrenting a movie does not remove copyright, but trackers can problematic to run).

If you want to prevent infrigement then dont publish images with watermarks online...