Washington - A consortium of digital watermarking technology developers announced on Thursday that they have endorsed a set of privacy principles issued by the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT).

Billerica, Mass. - Digimarc (NASD: DMRC), an Oregon-based provider of digital watermarking and other technologies, announced on Monday that it will sell its ID Systems business to L-1 Identity Solutions, for about $250 million.

New York - Ratings provider The Nielsen Company announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with digital watermarking developer Digimarc (NASD: DMRC), to launch a new service that will track online video distributed by media companies, social networks, peer-to-peer services and user-generated content sites.

Reston, Va. - Cinea, a unit of Dolby Laboratories that provides content-protection technology to the movie and TV industries, announced on Tuesday that News Corp.'s NDS has licensed the company's forensic watermarking technology for use with its video-on-demand and live broadcast products. The technology will provide NDS' customers with the ability to embed invisible, unique product IDs in individual video streams, allowing tracking of pirated content back to its source.

San Francisco - Universal Music Group will include watermarks that can be used to track the potential spread of its new digital rights management-free songs on file-sharing networks, Wired.com reported. The label last week announced a trial whereby it will sell songs free of DRM from a number of retailers. It's still unclear whether the watermark will be unique to each individual purchase, meaning that Universal would know if a particular consumer's purchased track was uploaded to a file-sharing network.

Update: Wired.com reported on Aug. 15 that the DRM-free Universal downloads will not in fact carry watermarks that can uniquely identify individual consumers. Rather, they could potentially be used to generally track when songs are uploaded to file-sharing networks.

Los Gatos, Calif. - BayTSP, a provider of online copyright monitoring and enforcement services for the entertainment industry, this week announced the launch of a platform that lets content owners add digital fingerprinting and watermarking technologies to their properties. The company says that five TV and movie studio clients -- including Viacom -- are currently paying as much as $500,000 a month for its services. The Wall Street Journal reported that BayTSP has hired more than 20 analysts, starting at $11/hour, to search YouTube and other sites for infringing videos, and send takedown notices; the company now serves more than a million such notices each month.

San Diego - Verance, a developer of digital watermarking technology, announced on Monday that its audio watermark technology for Blu-ray and HD DVD players and components is now available for licensing. "The Verance watermark technology provides value to all participants in the marketplace by encouraging availability of a broad selection of compelling titles for consumers to experience in new ways while discouraging the use of the emerging formats as a growth platform for piracy," said Verance CEO Nil Shah.

Los Angeles - Electronics maker Philips on Thursday introduced a plug-in for digital media editing equipment maker Avid's products, that allow producers to add Philips digital watermarks to film, video, audio, animation and games content. Such watermarks can be used to track usage and help deter piracy.

Reston, Va. - Cinea, a unit of Dolby Laboratories that develops content-protection technologies, on Tuesday introduced a new watermarking technology for video-on-demand content the company says will make the unique serialization of video streams easy and affordable. Virginia-based Cinea said the VOD watermarks can be deployed without using additional server power, involve no change in the distribution infrastructure, and require no updates to existing devices.

Beaverton, Ore. - Digital watermarking developer Digimarc announced on Thursday that it has been awarded a new U.S. patent (No. 7,171,016), that describers technology it says can identify music, images or video on multiple Internet sites. Applications include providing reports to rights holders to enable reasonable accounting for the distributed content. "Much of the repurposed content on YouTube, for example, contains copyrighted entertainment," said Digimarc chairman and CEO Bruce Davis. "If social networking sites implemented software to check each stream, they could identify copyrighted subject matter, create a report, negotiate compensation for the value chain and sell targeted advertising for related goods and services."

Los Angeles - The Digital Watermarking Alliance, a trade group of companies with commercial digital watermarking technologies that can identify and protect copyrighted works, announced on Thursday that Widevine Technologies has joined the organization. Seattle-based Widevine provides forensic watermarking technologies for telco, Internet, mobile, cable and satellite providers. Formed in September 2006, the Digital Watermarking Alliance's membership also includes Cinea, Digimarc, Philips, Thomson, Verance and Verimatrix.

Beaverton, Ore. - Digimarc, a developer of digital watermarking technology used to identify and protect copyrighted works, announced on Wednesday that USA Video Interactive (USVO) has signed a multi-year patent license agreement. Under the deal, financial terms of which were not disclosed, USVO can use Digimarc technology in its forensic tracking applications for commercially-available video, pre-release video and home marketing screening video. USVO said a major Hollywood studio recently signed on to use its products.