Metadata-based image watermarking for copyright protection

In this paper, we propose a practical scheme for copyright protection of images with the aid of EXIF metadata and error control codes. Application for robust watermarking is one of the major branches in digital rights management (DRM) systems and digital forensics. By use of robust watermarking, it generally alters selected coefficients in the transform domain to accomplish the embedding process. We consider not only the image contents itself, but we also employ the EXIF metadata, which serves as the role of watermark, to be integrated into our scheme. Moreover, for enhancing the copyright protection capability, channel coding is employed. Taking the manufacturer, camera model, date and time stamp, and some other information in the EXIF metadata into account, conventional watermarking techniques can be applied to ordinary pictures taken by ourselves, and watermarked images with good quality can be produced. Even when the marked image has been intentionally modified, the original EXIF with selected information can mostly be recovered from the channel decoding process. Simulation results present the effectiveness of such an implementation.

In modern times, the rapid growth of the Internet has made copyright protection of digital contents a critical issue. A Digital Rights Management (DRM) system is aimed at protecting the high-value digital assets and controlling the distribution and utilization of those digital assets. Watermarking technologies are being regarded as a vital mean to proffer copyright protection of digital images. Digital watermarking hides, in digital images, the information necessary for ownership identity to offer copyright protection. This paper proposes an innovative invisible and blind watermarking scheme for copyright protection of digital images with the purpose of defending against digital piracy. In the proposed watermarking scheme, a binary watermark image is invisibly embedded into the host image for achieving copyright protection. In watermark embedding, every pixel of the watermark image is embedded into the individual blocks of the host image sized 2×2. In the proposed watermarking scheme, the process of watermark extraction necessitates only the watermarked image and it doesn't require the original image or any of its characteristics, and hence, the proposed watermarking scheme is blind. The efficiency of the proposed watermarking scheme has been demonstrated via the experimental results.

Over the last few years, Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems have become increasingly successful in various areas of digital content production and distribution. While DRM-related technology research has achieved a certain degree of maturity since the 1990�s, the legal framework surrounding DRM systems remains in flux and is fiercely debated. This keynote speech first provides an overview of the various ways by which digital content is protected in a DRM system. The intertwining protection by technology, contracts, technology licenses and anti-circumvention regulations may lead to a new property right making copyright protection obsolete. However, there is a danger of over-protection: questions of fair use and other limitations to traditional copyright law have to be addressed. If competition is not able to solve this tension between the interests of content providers and the interests of users or the society at large -- which seems doubtful at least -- it is the law that has to provide a solution. The speech presents the different approaches legislatures in Europe and in the United States have adopted. Second, the speech discusses recent developments at the intersection of DRM and the law, in particular the discussions about DRM interoperability, patents on DRM technology, DRM standards, and the relationship between DRM and levy systems as well as between DRM and trusted computing. Third, the speech analyzes recent scholarship that attempts to solve legal and policy questions surrounding DRM on a technological level. The speech questions whether the tension between technological protection and public values such as fair use, privacy, competition and an innovation commons is really irreconcilable. It argues for a more nuanced approach that explores possibilities and limitations of a value-centered technology design of DRM systems. Only if technology research focuses on such questions, the disapproval of DRM systems by many legal scholars and policy activists could possibly diminish in the long term.

The paper focuses on the implementation of an advanced digital rights management (DRM) system which supported by web services offers copyright protection and management of digital media. The main components of the DRM system are a digital image library, which offers specialized services for storing and searching and a copyright protection and digital rights management subsystem for the digitized media based on innovative watermarking and web technologies.

Digital watermarking is one of the useful solutions for digital rights management systems, and it is also a popular research topic in the last decade. However, most watermarking related literature focus on how to resist intentional attacks by applying benchmarks to watermarked media to estimate the effectiveness of the watermarking algorithm. Only a few papers concentrate on the errorresilient transmission of watermarked media. In this paper, we propose an innovative algorithm on vector quantization (VQ) based image watermarking, suitable for error-resilient transmission overnoisy channels. By incorporating watermarking with multiple description coding (MDC), our propsed schemes for embedding multiple watermarks can efficiently overcome channel impairments while retaining the capability for copyright and ownership protection. In addition, we employ one optimization technique, called tabu search, to optimize both the watermarked image quality, and the robustness of the extracted watermarks. Simulations emonstrate the utility and practicability of our proposed algorithm.

Geospatial digital rights management

An improved E-DRM scheme for mobile environments

Rights expression languages (RELs) form a central component of digital rights management (DRM) systems. The process of development of RELs transforms the rights requirements to a formal language ready to be used in DRM systems. Decisions regarding the design of the conceptual model, syntax, semantics, and other such properties of the language, affect not only each other, but also the integration of the language in DRM systems, and the design of DRM system as a whole. This chapter provides a detailed analysis of each step of this process and the tradeoffs involved that not only affect the properties of the REL, but also the DRM system using that REL.

This paper presents a digital rights management (DRM) system for digital broadcasting based on home servers (DBHS) using receivers with large-capacity storage devices. DBHS will enable viewers to enjoy 'television anytime/anywhere' by utilizing these storage functions. Our proposed DRM system is suitable for broadcasting, and allows both rights protection and advanced access to content held on home storage devices (in terms of validity, usage and charge conditions, and so on). We developed a prototype DRM system using a Pentium3 personal computer (1 GHz) in order to evaluate the nonlinear playback and 'trick-play' modes of encrypted content on the hard disk drive (HDD). Using this prototype, we confirmed that the nonlinear playback of content encrypted using the proposed DRM system could be processed in real time. The functionality in terms of trick-play modes was equal to that of commercially available hard disk recorders. In addition, we developed a security module for the DRM system in the form of a smart card with a built-in processor. We confirmed that the proposed DRM system utilizing the new smart card could be applied to DBHS.

Owing to the proliferation of digitized media applications, such as e-Book, streaming videos, web images, shared music, etc., there is a growing need to protect the intellectual property rights of digital media and prevent illegal copying and falsification. This explains the strong demand for digital rights management (DRM), which is an access control technology that protects and enforces the rights associated with the use of digital content, such as multimedia data. The most important functions of DRM are to prevent unauthorized access and the creation of unauthorized copies of digital content, and moreover to provide a mechanism by which copies can be detected and traced (content tracking). Digital rights management is the most critical component of the intellectual property management and protection (IPMP) protocol widely promoted in the MPEG standards. Under the IPMP's scope, intellectual property (IP) is anything whose use owes the inventors or the owners some form of compensation. This could be a particular media application or it could be the technology used by the media. The management of IP involves storage and serving, appropriate authorization of use, and correct billing and tracking. The protection of IP prevents unauthorized use or misuse of the IP and can make legitimate use easy. According to [1], an effective DRM system should have the following four requirements. (1) The DRM system must package the content to be protected in a secure manner. (2) The DRM system must obtain the access conditions (license) specified by the owner of the protected content. (3) The DRM system must determine whether the access conditions have been fulfilled […]

This paper presents mechanisms to manage and protect notification of events in Digital Rights Management systems. Event notification is an important part within DRM systems that enable the controlled use of multimedia content through the complete digital valued chain, from creation to consumption of digital assets. These modules are responsible for reporting events related to multimedia content and/or peers that interact with them. Then, producers and distributors of multimedia content can be informed of the usage of the multimedia content that they have produced or distributed. In some cases, it is also important to protect the reported data in order to ensure its integrity and authenticity. I. INTRODUCTION Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems enable the creation, distribution and consumption of multimedia content. These systems are made up of different elements that enable the controlled use of multimedia content through the complete digital value chain. Typical components of DRM systems are digital object creators, license creators and interpreters, protection servers, etc. Moreover, something that could help when using multimedia content in a controlled way is the notification of events being done by users of multimedia systems. In this way, distributors of multimedia content can be informed of the usage of the multimedia objects they have provided through a web site, a downloading service or whatever distribution mechanism used. Afterwards, users illegally distributing content could be prosecuted by means of these activity records. By means of the chain of licenses or digital objects defining the contractual relationships between the actors of the value chain, they could be informed of the use of the content that they have created, adapted, distributed, etc. The notification of events could be useful, for example example to monitor the usage of copyrighted material or to know the exact connectivity conditions between two Peers when trying to deliver multimedia content. In the first case, a distributor could specify that, whenever the content that he distributes is rendered, he would receive a notification enabling him to manage his royalties. Then, the Peer would generate a notification, upon the content is rendered, which would be delivered to the distributor. This event notification would contain information about the digital content and the conditions under which it has been rendered. MPEG-21 Event Reporting (1) provides a standardised way for sharing information about events amongst peers and users. Such events are related to multimedia content and/or peers that interact with them. In the MPEG-21 context, the reporting messages that include information about different aspects of media usage are called Event Reports. MPEG-21 Event Reporting had some limitations when trying to manage events in trusted systems. Then, we proposed a way to improve this standard expanding its capabilities. A core experiment was carried out in order to verify the solution we had proposed for the report of events in trusted systems. This paper presents the solution that we proposed and how it was integrated in the MPEG-21 Event Reporting standard. On the other hand, in some of the above situations, especially in non-trusted systems, event notifications should be protected. We should guarantee access and modification only to the users that have permission. MPEG-21 Event Reporting standard initiative does not take into account the security of the events being notified. This specification does not provide a way to ensure integrity and authenticity or protection to the reported data neither to the request data. Usually, it is important to protect the sensible data reported, as the user data and the operations that he/she has performed will be later used to produce usage statistics, billing information, etc. This paper also presents a possible solution to this issue.

The simplicity of material reproduction and distribution has made protecting intellectual property rights more and more difficult in the digital age. By means of access and use control, Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems have become increasingly important in protecting copyrighted material. Studies indicate that DRM especially in the music and publishing sectors discourages illegal use and supports monetisation strategies for digital media. DRM, on the other hand, sometimes creates compromises that can lower user happiness and even promote piracy as a kind of resistance by restricting consumer rights and interoperability problems. New studies underlined the need of a balanced DRM strategy combining legal, technical, and economic elements while honouring fair use and user autonomy. Advances in blockchain and smart contracts are also being investigated as decentralised substitutes for conventional DRM systems, promising possible enhancements in rights enforcement and openness. The ease with which material may be reproduced and disseminated in the digital age has made intellectual property rights protection more difficult. Systems for digital rights management, or DRM, have become essential for protecting intellectual material by limiting access and use. DRM successfully discourages unauthorised usage and promotes digital media monetisation models, according to research, especially in the publishing and music sectors. DRM frequently brings trade-offs, though, such restricted consumer rights and interoperability problems, which can lower user pleasure and occasionally incite piracy as a form of resistance. A balanced DRM strategy that incorporates legal, technological, and economic tactics while upholding fair usage and user liberty is crucial, according to recent study. As decentralised alternatives to conventional DRM systems, developments in blockchain technology and smart contracts are also being investigated since they may enhance rights enforcement and transparency.

Digital right management (DRM) is an important research topic of knowledge right protection and multi-agent is a primary technology for DRM system. Digital watermark has been employed widely in copyright protection. The integration of multi-agent and digital watermark has been intensively investigated in recent years. An intelligent DRM system based on multi-agent is presented in this paper. The agent roles are classified as five types. The proposed solution can reduce the load of sever and network because the watermark is detected on the remote hosts. The system model is described and analyzed.

This research aims to examine copyright protection against unlawful acts, particularly in the context of piracy and claims over songs in the era of disruption. Through a normative juridical approach and data collection techniques via library research, this study explores the theoretical foundations of justice in law, the definition of unlawful acts, and the urgency of copyright protection for musical works. In-depth analysis is conducted on copyright discourse concerning music piracy, as well as the concept of legal protection that offers solutions and ideals for piracy or claims over songs. The research findings indicate that song piracy is not merely a common legal violation but also threatens the economic sustainability and creativity of music creators. Therefore, copyright protection must be accompanied by proactive preventive measures and effective law enforcement. In conclusion, copyright protection is a prerequisite for achieving justice in the music industry in the current digital era, requiring cross-sector collaboration and policy innovation to address the challenges faced.

The desires for robust digital rights management (DRM) systems are not new to the commercial world. Indeed, industrial research, development and deployment of systems with DRM aspects (most notably crude copy-control schemes) have a long history. Yet to date the industry has not seen much commercial success from shipping these systems on top of platforms that support general-purpose computing. There are many factors contributing to this lack of acceptance of current DRM systems, but I see three specific areas of work that are key adoption blockers today and ripe for further academic and commercial research. The lack of a general-purpose rights expression/authorization language, robust trust management engines and attestable trusted computing bases (TCBs) all hamper industrial development and deployment of DRM systems for digital content. In this paper I briefly describe each of these challenges, provide examples of how the industry is approaching each problem, and discuss how the solutions to each one of them are dependent on the others.