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What Is A Digital Watermark? Secure your online intellectual property.

By Aliza P. Sherman

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

If digital security of your intellectual property is of theutmost importance to your business, you might want to considerlicensing watermarking software from a company such as DigiMarc or Signum TechnologiesLtd.

A digital watermark is an invisible identification code or"identifier" that's permanently imbedded into audio,image, video and multimedia data files for later identification incase of theft. Contrary to common belief, digital watermarkingdoesn't protect against copyright theft. But having yourphotographs, for example, watermarked digitally can aid in provingan image is yours if you catch someone stealing your photographsand decide to go to trial.

Licensing digital watermarking software can start close to$1,000 or more. Obviously, if protecting your multimedia data iscritical to your business, it's worth the investment.

Aliza Sherman is an entrepreneur and author of Cybergrrl:A Woman's Guide to the World Wide Web (Ballantine Books).She is currently working on her next book and new company.

Aliza Sherman is a web pioneer, e-entrepreneur and author of eight books, including

PowerTools for Women in Business.

Her work can be found at mediaegg.com.

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