Isn “watermarking” supposed to solve the IPR protection problem?
Yes, partly. The idea behind “watermarking” is to add some extra data to the original material which is imperceptible and cannot be easily removed. Watermarking paper is a very good analogy except that digital watermarking in not supposed to be easily detected. The technique has been of great interest to those in the publishing business where the illicit copy itself will yield the watermark which only the rights owner can have inserted. However, this does not alone enable the owner to demonstrate the existence of the original at a particular time. Other methods must be used in addition, not least the registering methods recommended by probity.org, either on the original or watermarked versions. The weakness of digital watermarking is that it is very difficult to make it resilient to subsequent processing (e.g. audio or video compression). Less subtle and traditional methods of “watermarking” are better, such as audible or visible “blemishes”. There is a long tradition of cartographers
