At 13:07 +0000 29/11/02, Martin Evening wrote:
For more more robust solutions, consider invisible watermarking software.
Martin
Can you name some robust software? Signum & Digimark are exceedingly
fragile! They are more robust than file info but only marginally!
If there is some method that survives normal image processing (crop,
rotate, blur, sharpen, resize etc) I'd be really pleased to know of
it.
You may have a point here, although if there is anyone here from Signum on the list, such as Alan, they may wish to answer that themselves. However, it is important to assert your copyright. Metadata, such as File Info can be written to a JPEG format, although as has been pointed out, it can accidentally get stripped all too easily. There are suggestions of interesting ways that metadata might be used to various things that will make the schema more robust. For example it is plausible that a file could actively link to the creator's website every time it is open and there is an Internet connection active. That way even if the metadata had been stripped it could be restored into the file again.
Where there is a will to beat the system, there is always a way. But in my experience I get a lot of calls and emails from people wanting to know how much it would cost to reuse a photograph and I in turn am able to use my image database to know who to contact at the respective model agencies to make sure that the model usage fee is also taken into account. I could cheat, like I have a quote for a website usage in Florida and would anyone be the wiser if I didn't inform the model's agent? But that's not the way I want to do business and I find there are clients who feel the same way and would not like to face the embarrassment of being caught out by me contacting their client directly to report an infringement.
Martin
Martin Evening Photography <www.martinevening.com>
Co-listowner ProDIG discussion list <http://www.prodig.org>
Author of Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers
<www.photoshopforphotographers.com>
