Digital Watermarking
From Isopedia
Digital Watermarking is a relatively new technology which allows one to add hidden copyright notices or other verification messages to digital audio, video, or image signals and documents. This is most prevalent in today's digital age in which the downloading of un-copyrighted music, video, and documents over the Internet.
An image marked with a reversible visible watermark (4).
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Historical Information
There is not much history behind such a new term. The idea of Digital Watermarking dates back to around 1970; however it was not until the 1990’s that it came into fruition. In 1992, the actual term “digital watermark” was first coined by Andrew Tirkel and Charles Osborne in their paper “Electronic Water Mark.” The term is originally Japanese, “denshi sukashi,” which literally translates to an “electronic watermark.”
Information hiding techniques were almost completely ignored by the research community and the industry, until the early nineties. In 1996, the first academic conference was held on the subject. Several other conferences focusing on information hiding as well as watermarking followed. The main driving force behind the conferences was the concern over protecting copyright- audio, video and other works. As they become more readily available in digital form, fear of large-scale unauthorized copying arose, undermining the music, film, book, and software publishing industries. Therefore, significant research began to be put into watermarking in order to prosecute copyright violators.
Digital Watermarking is the undetectable insertion of information into multimedia data. The main concept of Digital Watermarking is the insertion of information, such as a number or text, into the multimedia data through slight modification of the data. Digital Watermarking must be unnoticeable and fragile, depending on the application.
Technical Information and Applications
Digital Watermarking is a process used to allow owners and copyright holders to implant their own digital code into a multimedia agent such as: audio files, image files, documents, video files and other types of multimedia. This is a way to secure a file so others cannot alter the file or claim it as their own. By utilizing watermarking, authors of the files are able to encode their work with copyright information such as who created the file, when it was created, and the file’s terms of use.
Watermarking is becoming increasingly popular in the MP3 industry since MP3’s are easy to copy and share illegally. I-Tunes uses watermarking to protect their files so individuals cannot share their multimedia with other individuals. Through watermarking, only the people who buy these files can play the files back on their computers; this helps to stop unauthorized use.
Watermarking can also be used with image files. We often see this when someone is selling photography online; they stenograph their images with either the owner or a sponsor or company’s name. This process disables people from taking the files from the internet and translating them for their own use. It also helps promote many businesses by encouraging people to pay for their services.
Digital Watermarking is a good way to prove that a file is authentic and not a counterfeit file. The Digital Watermarking era is becoming more predominant in the coming years. Also, most multimedia companies have become more involved in this process to secure their products and receive the payments they deserve. It is a great safe and ethical way to authenticate a file that a couple of years ago, would have been open to anyone, and susceptible to copyright infringement.
Sources
1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_watermarking
2) http://www.watermarkingworld.org/
3) http://www.petitcolas.net/fabien/steganography/
4) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december97/ibm/12lotspiech.html
Team Members
Raymond Agoglia
Andrea Antonucci
Brian Larkin
Kylie Murray
