From: Ron Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>What was not mentioned in the original post, is that Adobe did introduce copyright protection in Photoshop 4. The Digimarc plug-in works in a way that is similar to Signum - it embeds an invisible watermark that can only be read by Photoshop and the Digimarc reader plug-in. If a watermark is present or the user has selected 'Mark as Copyrighted' in File Info, a copyright symbol will appear in the title bar. The reader will enable you to discover the identity of the author.
Just got back from a weekend away so this is the first chance I've had of
reading the postings from various Prodigers in response to my original
posting last Friday about safeguarding the copyright of original digital
images. Very interesting and, as usual, very helpful they were too.
In particular, Victor Patterson's suggestion that Adobe should address this
issue in a future upgrade of Photoshop appears a sound one. Perhaps Martin
Evening, as a Photoshop alpha and beta tester for Adobe, would consider
taking up the cudgels on our behalf?
Without going into too much detail, there are worries about a business model that relies on a third-party company to administer the user database. What happens if they go bust in the next 10, 20, 50 years? Something not unheard of in Silicon Valley. UK DIG's initiative was to promote the idea of a non commercial linked user ID system.Therefore the user ID part could be maintained by a collective of interested professional associations and then it is up to the free market to decide whose software system makes best use of embedding or incorporating the ID.
But to consider where we are at today - Adobe announced XMP at Seybold last year. <http://www.adobe.com:80/products/xmp/main.html>. XMP is an open source licence and can be built in to any application. To quote from the site page:
"XMP embeds metadata inside application files. Because the metadata is enclosed within the file, documents retain their context when they exit their original system or environment. The embedded metadata can include any XML schema, provided it is described in RDF syntax. Extensible, embedded metadata in application files provides significant potential for repurposing, archiving, and automation in publishing workflows."
XMP is already available in Adobe programs like Photoshop 7 and arguably will offer a more flexible and advanced approach to the future of image management and copyright protection.
Martin Evening
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