Matt,
Matt Morgan wrote:
> What is ARTstor's fear in making images, of a defined
low-resolution, available to anyone who can get Net access?
Speaking for my institution--I think we wouldn't be afraid of making
screen-quality images widely available if we had a cheap, easy,
impractically-defeatable system for watermarking images in such a way
that average web-browsing people could easily read that watermark (so
they knew the images were ours, and could find a link back to our web
site, for example).
I probably know very little about watermarking, except that we could
pay Digimarc a lot of money for the privilege, and then only people
who happened to view our images in Photoshop or some other
professional software package would see the watermark. If they
happened to be the web designers who were borrowing our images for
re-display, they might be polite and provide descriptive text for
their web visitors to read. But it would work better if the web
browsing software was able to read the watermark and, without the
intervention of the web designer, provide the watermark info to
viewers of the image in some easy and familiar way. Also, I'd rather
do it with a 3rd-party-signed certificate, and not have to involve
Digimarc (and pay a fee based on quantity).
A couple of quick references on digital watermarking:
"Masterpieces on view" by Doug Stewart:
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/pages/solutions299.html
Survey of IBM's work on digital watermarking with the Hermitage collection.
"Digital watermarking: a guide for programmers and technical managers"
Ingemar Cox, Matthew Miller, Jeffrey Bloom; Morgan Kaufman Publishers,
Inc. ISBN 1-55860-714-5.
Reviewed as having a good collection of resources on digital
watermarking. (I have a copy on order.)
The question I would ask of ARTstor is why the return to a centralized
data repository model? The architecture they have chosen is driving the
financial requirements of the project to no small degree. Admittedly
there are institutions without the expertise/funding to do imaging but a
single monolithic resource carries with it large financial demands.
Is this possible? I don't think there is a standard for this, or if
one is in the works, or if some other initiative for something similar
exists.
Don't know about "reading" the digital watermark but you certainly could
deliver the image with additional data for display.
The purpose of the digital watermark is to prove origin and consequently
possible misuse. Not sure it is the best means for carrying information
for display to the user.
Patrick
--
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
[email protected]
Co-Editor, ISO Reference Model for Topic Maps
---
You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: [email protected]
To unsubscribe send a blank email to
[email protected]
