In regards to #61
Different watermarking technologies provide different levels of utility, robustness, resilience, and assurance. However, C2PA should not be responsible for benchmarking or ranking individual watermarking technologies.
Performing this evaluation within C2PA would require defining test methodologies, thresholds, environmental assumptions, and potentially maintaining comparative assessments as watermarking technologies evolve.
Instead, the softbinding registry should allow an entry to reference an external credential or certification associated with the watermark.
Proposal
Allow a softbinding entry to optionally include one or more credentials.
Each credential reference should include, at minimum:
Credential URL — A link to the credential, certification, attestation, or other machine-readable evidence.
Credential type — The type of credential or certification being referenced.
For example:
{
"credentials": [
{
"type": "example.watermark.robustness-certification",
"url": "https://example.org/credentials/12345"
}
]
}
This would allow independent organizations, certification bodies, industry groups, or other authorities to make claims about the characteristics of a watermark without requiring C2PA itself to evaluate those claims.
Those credentials could include values for robustnessEvidence or other metadata.
Rationale
C2PA's role should be to provide the mechanism for identifying and using softbindings, rather than determining whether one watermark is more robust or useful than another.
Associating credentials with a softbinding entry would allow external schemes to attest to properties such as robustness, interoperability, conformance, or suitability for a particular use case while keeping those assessments outside of the C2PA specification.
The presence of a credential should not imply endorsement by C2PA; it simply provides a discoverable reference to an external assertion about the softbinding technology.
In regards to #61
Different watermarking technologies provide different levels of utility, robustness, resilience, and assurance. However, C2PA should not be responsible for benchmarking or ranking individual watermarking technologies.
Performing this evaluation within C2PA would require defining test methodologies, thresholds, environmental assumptions, and potentially maintaining comparative assessments as watermarking technologies evolve.
Instead, the softbinding registry should allow an entry to reference an external credential or certification associated with the watermark.
Proposal
Allow a softbinding entry to optionally include one or more credentials.
Each credential reference should include, at minimum:
Credential URL — A link to the credential, certification, attestation, or other machine-readable evidence.
Credential type — The type of credential or certification being referenced.
For example:
{
"credentials": [
{
"type": "example.watermark.robustness-certification",
"url": "https://example.org/credentials/12345"
}
]
}
This would allow independent organizations, certification bodies, industry groups, or other authorities to make claims about the characteristics of a watermark without requiring C2PA itself to evaluate those claims.
Those credentials could include values for robustnessEvidence or other metadata.
Rationale
C2PA's role should be to provide the mechanism for identifying and using softbindings, rather than determining whether one watermark is more robust or useful than another.
Associating credentials with a softbinding entry would allow external schemes to attest to properties such as robustness, interoperability, conformance, or suitability for a particular use case while keeping those assessments outside of the C2PA specification.
The presence of a credential should not imply endorsement by C2PA; it simply provides a discoverable reference to an external assertion about the softbinding technology.