Vendors Team on Digital Watermarks

Group designs standard to protect copyrighted content.

A group of Japanese and U.S. computer and consumer electronics vendors said Wednesday they will combine their digital watermark technologies to create a unified standard for sending copy-protected data.

Called the Galaxy group, the five companies hope the joint effort will encourage owners of content such as movies and music to release their offerings in digital media such as DVD. Participants are Hitachi, IBM, NEC, Pioneer Electronics, and Sony.

Digital watermarking is a method for adding information to digital content so an electronic system can either allow or forbid copying the content. The technology, which is first expected to appear in recordable DVD media, can be used to prevent unauthorized copies of copyrighted material.

Each of the companies has been working separately on the technology. They hope that by combining forces they can create a single, stronger technique by the second half of this year. They plan to present the combined technology to a review panel that is evaluating different digital watermark approaches.

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