Digital watermarking worth $500m by 2012

MultiMedia Intelligence has reported that applications leveraging content identification technologies such as digital watermarking and fingerprinting are growing rapidly and could surpass $500 million worldwide by 2012. Key applications include Internet and broadcast content monitoring, metadata association, copyright control, content protection and forensics, and interactive advertising. (Advanced-Television)

DRM Is Dead, But Watermarks Rise From Its Ashes

With all of the Big Four record labels now jettisoning digital rights management, music fans have every reason to rejoice. But consumer advocates are singing a note of caution, as the music industry experiments with digital-watermarking technology as a DRM substitute. Analyses of watermarked traffic can be done with "forensic precision," and that the results could give the music industry hard evidence of copyright music transiting specific internet providers' networks. "It gives them the ability to put pressure on policy makers and ISPs to do filtering," said Fred Von Lohmann, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney. (Wired)