June 15, 2000
Nomura Research Institute, Ltd.
Nomura Research Institute, Ltd.
The Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers
and Publishers (hereunder referred to as JASRAC. Headquarters: Shibuya
ward, Tokyo. President: Shigeru Yoshida), with Nomura Research Institute,
Inc. (hereunder referred to as NRI. Headquarters: Chiyoda ward, Tokyo.
President: Mr. Shozo Hashimoto) commissioned to provide services,
together with international associations of copyright management societies,
CISAC (Headquarters: Paris. Secretary General: Mr. Eric Baptiste)
and BIEM (Headquarters: Paris. Secretary General: Mr. Ronald Mooij),
will jointly conduct an international evaluation project for audio
digital watermark technology, the first of its kind initiated by copyright
management bodies, dubbed "STEP 2000".
STEP 2000 Project Schedule Final proposals to RFP will be accepted until July 14, 2000 (Japan time for all dates hereunder). Participating companies are to provide the project secretariat with the prescribed items required for evaluation by August 14, 2000, and all necessary tests required for the evaluation are scheduled to be concluded by September 14, 2000. Publication of the companies whose technologies are certified for technical aptitude will be on or after September 15, 2000. The Significance of STEP 2000 for JASRAC On June 3, 1999, JASRAC announced its vision for the copyright management system of the digitized and networked age, the "DAWN 2001" plan. DAWN 2001 is a statement to copyright owners and end users alike on how copyrights should be managed and protected, as well as a proposal to transmission service operators and other businesses involved in the digital distribution of music on how copyright management and protection should be incorporated into their businesses. In doing so, it presents a concept of usage licensing under the conditions of "copy protection", "usage reporting" and "digital watermarking" of the sound recording. For JASRAC, STEP 2000 is one very important "step" in the realization of DAWN 2001. *The term "STEP 2000" comes from the abbreviation of "by Societies, Technical Evaluation for Promoting practical utilization of digital watermark". Copyright administration organizations are typically referred to as "societies" . *For questions concerning STEP 2000, please contact:
Terminology: Digital Watermark Digital watermark technology is a technology whereby copy control signals and identification data, for the purpose of content management, are embedded into digital content data, in this case music data. Until now, these functions were dependent on data inserted into content data "headers", but because data included in headers are easy to find and relatively easy to remove (alter), they were considered inadequate for copyright protection and management purposes in digital music distribution. Because the embedding of information data using digital watermark technology partially replaces data from the entire length of the content data, it is believed that removal and alteration of this data would be difficult, eliminating some of the problems inherent with previous solutions. However, digital watermarks have their own technologically induced weaknesses, such as decline in sound quality as a result of the partial replacement of the original data, and the erasure of watermark data as a result of music utilization processes. These issues must be dealt with by trading off requirements on information quantity and time cycles. To List of Press Releases Inquiries: webmaster@nri.co.jp Copyright(c) 1994-2000 Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. All rights reserved. |
