2004-2007: Watermarking geometric models. New Zealand Foundation for Research Science and Technology through a subcontract from the University of Auckland via Clark Thomborson. Investigator: F. C. Langbein. £61,000.
With the development of the Internet, digital media including audio, video, image and 3D shapes, can be copied and distributed easily. Often owners of the data wish to distribute it to some extend, but would either like to limit the distribution only to authorised persons or ensure that they can be clearly identified as the owner to avoid unauthorised re-use of the data. Conventional encryption schemes are suitable to limit access to the data and distribute it to a small number of people. However, they are unsuitable to distribute data to a wider audience as a key is required for decryption and after the data has been decrypted the content is not protected anymore from further distribution.
The aim of robust digital watermarking is to provide a reliable method to verify the origin of a certain data set. For this usually additional information is inserted into the data set such that it can be recovered later to prove, in the context of a court of law, the origin of the data.
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