Can Watermarking Save Others From Emulex Hoax?

And that's where Blue Spike Inc., hopes to make its mark: The company is planning to release a product in the next 90 days that could help prevent similar hoaxes. Blue Spike already produces digital watermarking technologies for video and audio files and is now developing a technology that would make it possible for Internet Wire and others to verify the electronic text documents they receive. VP Gregg Moskowitz said the product will let Internet Wire distribute a decoder to companies that use its service, thereby allowing it to verify the origins of news releases.

But Internet Wire CEO Michael Terpin says that the wire service shouldn't depend on technology to do the job of the wire service. The fraudulent posting was achieved only when the perpetrator convinced Internet Wire's night shift that the release had already been approved for posting by the day crew, Terpin said. It was a simple con job, he added.

About one out of 50,000 releases turns out to be fraudulent, so the real issue is that "we shouldn't rely on technology instead of good old-fashioned follow-up," Terpin said.

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