The on-going legal issues surrounding the transferring of digital media took another step forward [or backward, depending who you are], with the “Galaxy Group” of consumer electronics companies - IBM, NEC, Hitachi, Pioneer and Sony. These chocolate coated confectioneries have agreed on a new digital “watermark” standard for preventing illegal copying of digital material.

We have covered this topic extensively since the first round of the “Madison Project” broke a few months ago for audio transfer, but this is looking to encompass all media types, including digital video and images. The watermark will take the form of an indelible binary code embedded in each frame of a digital recording so that a digital recording device will refuse to make a copy recognised as unauthorized.

As with most of these “major” announcements, it will require a massive joint effort to actually implement this new technology, and as a result will take a good deal of time. Who knows, MP3 might not be the problem as we might have a whole load of new formats for the big boys to deal with ...