美国的IBM和日本的NEC公司已经就电子水印的标准达成了一致意见。这个新标准将有助于通过电子技术来保护诸如DVD之类的数码资讯的版权。传统的水印技术是把几乎看不见的图案“嵌”入纸内。数百年来,它一直被用来保护和鉴定货币及重要文件。电子水印也是利用类似的方法把数据图形隐藏于图像信号中,从而对电子影像进行防伪保护和鉴别。就像传统的水印一样,电子水印在通常情况下也是不可见的,而且不会影响影像的质量。但是它可以被特制的芯片发现并显现出来,以判别影像是否为正版。IBM和NEC相信他们的技术非常适合正在兴起的DVD市场。由于DVD采取的数码格式很容易被制 The United States’s IBM and Japan’s NEC have reached an agreement on the standard of electronic watermarking. This new standard will help protect the copyright of digital information such as DVDs through electronic technology. The traditional watermarking technique is to “inline” an almost invisible pattern into paper. For centuries, it has been used to protect and identify currencies and important documents. Electronic watermarking is also using similar methods to hide data graphics in image signals, thereby protecting and identifying electronic images. Like traditional watermarks, electronic watermarks are not normally visible and do not affect the quality of the image. But it can be discovered and revealed by specially crafted chips to determine whether the images are genuine. IBM and NEC believe that their technology is very suitable for the emerging DVD market. Because the digital format adopted by DVD is easily made