Image attribution is big business on this tangled web of ours, but embedding digital watermarks into images is a costly and time-consuming procedure for most photographers -- which is why this Canon patent application is so intriguing. The filing describes a "Registration" mode for digital cameras that embeds biometric data captured from your iris in the image automatically as a watermark -- you simply set yourself as one of up to five users, look into the viewfinder for a moment so the camera can scan your eye, and start taking photos. The system embeds the metadata in batches to avoid slowing the camera down while you're out in the field, and it sounds like the system can be modified to simply generate a verification code instead of a true watermark, preserving image quality. Of course, this is just a patent application, so there's no word on when or where we might see this tech pop up, but you know photographers will be all over this when it finally hits.

[Via Photography Bay, thanks Eric]

With movie studios sending around an increasing amount of digital footage before a film is even released, there are a growing number of opportunities for pirates to get their hands on that valuable content and do what pirates do best. We've already seen Dolby Laboratories subsidiary Cinea attempt to combat this problem by shipping secure DVDs and players to Academy Awards judges, and now the company has released a portable USB 2.0 video key called the SV510 that brings the same encryption technology to the dailies and rough cuts that need to be distributed throughout the filmmaking process. Once the desired footage has been encoded with Cinea's S-VIEW encryption and watermarking technique, it can be safely sent on a DVD or via the Internet to recipients with an authorized SV510, who must plug the device into their PCs and enter a six to twelve digit code if they wish to view the content. This system ensures that even if a laptop and SV510 are both lost/stolen together, the encrypted video cannot be viewed without a password; and for heightened security, any of the Cinea peripherals can be remotely de-authorized by the content creators. The Windows version of this product is available immediately for $600 -- a Mac edition will be shipping in October -- along with a "management fee" of $20/month for the life of the device.

[Via über gizmo]