The demand for rapid use of Internet has increased many folds in distributed environments. It is easy for the custodian of the digital data to transfer images of classification across computers via internet. The information transmitted is not secured. Conventional encryption and decryption algorithms are vulnerable from the thefts of the digital data and do not protect the data from copying after the data is transmitted. The data prone to copyright thefts should be protected against manipulation, misuse and security breaks. First the image is classified using maximum likelihood classification and fuzzy model. Second, for transmission, with copyright information, image is secured, by image bit depth plane digital image watermarking. In this method, image is read and separated into n-bit planes. The accuracy is tested using visual interpretation and assessment. The application of this method is identification of ownership, claim of ownership, online transaction, digital content authorization, file reconstruction. This method is robust against intentional and unintentional attacks of malicious users.