IBM & NEC To Cooperate in Establishing Common Standard to Prevent Illegal Copying of Digital Video Discs.NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 15, 1998-- New standard will integrate both companies' leading-edge electronic watermark watermark: see paper. See digital watermark. technology for motion pictures Two of the world's leading forces in information technology research, IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) and NEC (NEC Corporation, Tokyo, www.nec.com, www.necus.com) An electronics conglomerate known in the U.S. for its monitors. In Japan, it had the lion's share of the PC market until the late 1990s (see PC 98). NEC was founded in Tokyo in 1899 as Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. , have agreed to establish the first effective digital watermarking Digital watermarking is a technique which allows an individual to add hidden copyright notices or other verification messages to digital audio, video, or image signals and documents. standard to electronically protect the copyright of digital contents such as digital video discs (DVD DVD: see digital versatile disc. DVD in full digital video disc or digital versatile disc Type of optical disc. The DVD represents the second generation of compact-disc (CD) technology. ). The two firms plan to integrate their respective advanced electronic watermark technology for motion pictures and then present their single standard to the Copyright Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG CPTWG Copy Protection Technical Working Group (IBM, Philips, et al) CPTWG Copyright Protection Technical Working Group CPTWG Copy Protection Technology Working Group ) for proposed adoption by this international organization, which promotes technology for preventing illegal copying of electronic copyrighted materials. Conventional watermarks have long been used to authenticate currencies and important documents by embedding an almost-invisible official mark within the paper itself. Similarly, electronic watermarks can authenticate electronic images by embedding hidden data patterns within the video signal. Like regular watermarks, electronic watermarks are invisible and do not affect the quality of the video image, but they can be easily detected with special chips and made visible to prove whether a video image is an authentic copy. The new electronic watermark technology is designed particularly for use with DVD technology, which is emerging as the format of the future for storing video images, allowing full-length movies to be stored on a disc about the same size as a Compact Disc (CD). But the digital format also allows virtually perfect copies, a factor that makes it easy for high-quality, illegal copies to be made. Thus, developing technical measures to prevent illegal copying has become an urgent priority for movie makers and distributors. Currently, DVD systems use a number of technologies to prevent illegal copying, including a method for scrambling data using cryptograms, called the "content scrambling system" (CSS (1) See Cascading Style Sheets. (2) (Content Scrambling System) The copy protection system applied to DVDs, which uses a 40-bit key to encrypt the movie. ), and a function called or analog protection system The Analog Protection System (APS), also known as Copyguard, is a DVD copy prevention system originally developed by Macrovision. DVDs encoded with APS become garbled and unwatchable when attempting to transfer the images and sounds to VHS. (APS) which prevents copying by generating noise on the video screen if a copy is made. Thus, electronic watermark technology jointly promoted by IBM and NEC is intended to supplement conventional copy protection technologies and utilize a method of embedding invisible electronic watermarks within content data. A circuit for detecting electronic watermarks will be incorporated into LSI LSI: see integrated circuit. (Large Scale Integration) Between 3,000 and 100,000 transistors on a chip. See SSI, MSI, VLSI and ULSI. chips within DVD video players and the DVD drives DVD drives come in a variety of speeds and options. The original drive (1x) transferred data at 1.35MB per second. By doubling the spindle speed (RPMs) for 2x drives, the transfer rate increased to 2.7MB/sec and has been increasing ever since. of personal computers. This will prevent the content from being illegally copied and make it impossible to playback illegally copied content. Nevertheless, in order to encourage home use of recordable DVDs, this electronic watermark technology will enable users to make a one-time-only copy allowing people, for example, to record television programs for later viewing as they do today with video tape recorders. The goal of the joint work between IBM and NEC is to incorporate their electronic watermark technology into DVD content and also to enable DVD equipment to decode embedded information in 1999. The two companies also plan to promote the future application of this technology in digital satellite broadcasts and to digital video cassette video cassette Noun a cassette containing video tape video cassette n → videocassette f video cassette n → tapes. NOTE: IBM is a trademark of IBM Corporation. NEC is a trademark of NEC Corporation.
CONTACT: IBM Contacts:
IBM Asia Pacific
Mac Jeffery, +81-3-5572-2643
E-mail: macj@jp.ibm.com
or
TSI, New York
Pam Preston, 212/320-2212
or
NEC Contacts:
NEC Corp.
Aston Bridgman, +81-3-3798-6511
E-mail: Aston_Bridgman@HO-PRD.ccgw.nec.co.jp
or
NEC USA Inc.
Kazuko Anderson, 212/702-7052
Email: kako@worldnet.att.com
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