Enforcement of copyright laws for multimedia through blind, detectable, reversible watermarking

A new classification of digital watermarking techniques, which is based on the way the decoding process works, is introduced. This classification is used to analyze the impact concepts such as watermark blindness, privateness, readability and reversibility have on practical application scenarios. In the second part of the work, a new, object-oriented, electronic copyright management system (ECMS) is presented which, by relying on state-of-the-art technology, makes it possible the enforcement of copyright laws in an open-network environment.