Watermarks

Watermarks serve two purposes – to indicate the provenance of digital content and to create a permanent mark of ownership for pictures, photographs, artwork and books.  Watermarks by design have two variable uses – observed or hidden.

The LibreDigital LDW manages both sorts of watermarks.

WYSIWYG Watermarks

The LDW currently supports adding observed watermarks to vended page images.   The LDW also has the ability to add observed watermarks to audio and video streams Observed watermarks are effective for advising users of ownership and value while making theft painful (due to removal or cropping).  These watermarks are generally visible and obvious to all content users.

The Power of the Hidden Watermark

Hidden watermarks take the next step and are able to provide more information about the individual file being analyzed and can be a tremendous help toward documenting ownership of content, identifying legitimate use, and, unfortunately, documenting cases of misuse as well.  Hidden watermarks are used in the LDW to enable access to information both as whole and partial works via the LibreDigital DataPipe. 

The LDW Hidden Watermark Encode System

LibreDigital has produced a method of applying hidden watermarks to content so that the watermarks:

• • work for any content format - PDF, SWF, raster image, audio file, or video file
  • work for both whole works (e.g. whole books / audio books / videos) and any portion of a whole work (e.g. a single page image, a short audio clip, etc.)
  • remain with the content, even if it is edited or repurposed by an unscrupulous user
  • are applied in real-time, when the content is vended via DataPipe.
    

With the LDW Hidden Watermark Encode System (“WES”), the DataPipe automatically appends the following information to each watermark designated piece of content vended:

• • original content ISBN
  • vend time and date
  • Datapipe partner's unique identification number
  • the geometry and format as vended (e.g. for a page image - a 100 X 68 JPG)

For more information on LDW Watermarking, please visit our Tech Note on Watermarking in the Resource area.