commercial watermarking products

[Sheila McAlister]

I've searched through the list archives for previous postings on
digital watermarking of images, but didn't find any posts which
specifically addressed an archive/library's experience using a 
commercial product such as DigiMarc, PixelTag, etc. and what led them 
to choose said product. (I've also checked out  articles by Peter 
Cassidy, Doug Isenberg and Richard Wiggins available through 
webreference.com)

I'd appreciate any input you may have on this topic, but some of the
questions which I have include:

1. What did you choose and why? Are you combining your approach with
in-house methods also (e.g. low dpi, adding a caption to the image,
etc.) and why or why not?

2. How large is your collection? Is it growing? Did the product
you chose charge a flat fee or per image?

3. Have you started tracking duplication without permission? Have you
found a high-number of illegal copies?

4. Some products block downloading of images such as SafeImage
(still in the design stages). Was this a feature you wanted?

5. Some products such as DigiMarc only display the watermark
information in "proprietary" software (i.e. PhotoShop, etc.), and do
not display the watermark when printing. Did you consider this
problematic?

Basically any information you have time or the inclination to share
with me would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your expertise and time


Sheila McAlister
Electronic Access Coordinator
Richard B. Russell Library
University of Georgia Libraries
mcalists at libris.libs.uga.edu