The presence of Internet has enabled us to share digital
information easily. We can obtain a picture taken by a photographer from a
website and put it on our website, we can download songs in MP3 format from
websites and ftp sites and listen to the songs as many times as we want
to. Same thing with movies. We can find movies in digital format
over the internet. The good thing is: they are FREE. And if we are
'creative' enough, we can make money out of these free goods.
This has worried the
original owner of the goods, or the
'intellectual property owners'. The biggest worry comes from the
recording companies as MP3 becomes very popular these days. They are
afraid that consumers will stop buying CDs when they can obtain the
music from the internet at no cost at all. Assisted by current
technology, musicians, recording companies, and also other owners of
intellectual property have taken steps to protect their exclusive rights from
people trying to take advantage of their properties.
One thing that is considered as an effective way to protect
them is to embed digital watermark in still images, music, and movies
(esp. DVD).
|
Digital watermark
is defined as:
A
pattern of bits inserted into a digital image, audio or video file that
identifies the file's copyright information, that is designed to be completely
invisible/inaudible. |
The
actual bits representing the watermark must be scattered throughout the file
in such a way that they cannot be identified and manipulated, and they must be
able to withstand normal changes to the file.
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