JISC

Start date: 1 January 1999

End date: 1 August 1999

Funding programme: JISC Technologies Application (JTAP) programme

The project report presents a technical analysis of the capabilities and characteristics of technologies proposed for use as a means of providing copyright protection for digital information resources:

•  Watermarks and fingerprints provide indication of ownership, and indication of the identity of a licensed user, respectively, by embedding security information in the digital object. This information may be visible (as in a backwash image), or, more conventionally, invisible. While this has some attraction to copyright owners, the security properties of this technology are limited
• 'Digital signatures' is a popular term for one of the capabilities of public key cryptosystems (PKCS). As well as providing signature services (origin authentication), this technology supports content confidentiality and content integrity services. These services are reliable ('strong' in the terminology of cryptography), but the technology is not designed for use in environments where data objects are subject to modification (e.g. by compression). Moreover, its deployment would be likely to incur a significant cost.

The report also considers developments in US law, concerning the digital information environment, which may influence developments in European law, and affect commercial practice for providing access to digital information resources.