Digital Watermarking

1. Digital Watermarking Rob Farraher Ken Pickering Lim Vu

2. Big Brother Industries © 1984 • Joe Wahoo decides to be a law abiding citizen and purchase music online from Big Brother Industries Joe Wahoo

3. Big Brother Industries © 1984 • He purchases licenses to listen the mp3s he has downloaded • He also owns the latest SDMI mp3 player

4. SDMI? • Secure Digital Music Initiative • Who: Conglomerate of world-wide recording, consumer electronic, and information technology corporations • Purpose: To design and implement a copyright protection scheme for music • How: Digital Watermarking

5. MP3 Nirvana? • Joe’s friend, Dave, sends him a new NSync mp3 • Joe loves the song and wants to listen to it on his new mp3 player • But a slight problem arises

6. Rejection • Dave’s mp3 turns out to be watermarked only for his use • Joe’s mp3 player rejects Dave’s NSync mp3 because it detects the mp3 watermark registered to Dave

7. Breakin’ the Law • Joe decides to hack and remove the watermark on Dave’s mp3 so his mp3 player will play the song • He uses the attacks described in a research paper released by Princeton’s professor Felton

8. What Is Watermarking? • Digital information embedded within any digital media that can later be detected and extracted • Characteristics • Perceptible or Imperceptible • Robust or Fragile

9. Watermarking Applications • Applications include • Authentication and verification • Fingerprinting • Ownership Assertion • Content labeling • Usage Control

10. Authentication and Verification • Use of any type of watermark to authenticate files and digital media • Verification allow users to download files in an insecure channel • Similar to a cryptographic hash sent with a file but much more difficult for an attacker to forge and insert a correct watermark

11. Fingerprinting • Imperceptible watermarks used to label content for identification purposes • If content is copied and improperly used, the watermark can be viewed and the source of the copying can be found • If Joe Wahoo distributes music with his watermark embedded, any authority with the watermark directory can track him down

12. Ownership Assertion • A watermark can be placed in a music document to declare who owns/ produces the music • This is basically used to remove the “value” of the data, in a lot of circumstances since it asserts it as the owners intellectual property or copyright

13. Content Labeling • Involves using watermarks to carry and deliver data on the media they are embedded within • Uses within databases and search engines • Advantage in that description of data is internally stored within file

14. Usage Control • A proposed use for watermarking could be to control accessing and copying music. • The theory is that when a copy is made, some counter in the file is decremented. • This requires a monopoly on copying.

15. Problems with Watermarking • Must not be audible and change little content of MP3 file • Plain text to “message” will always be available • Must be universally accepted by software developers that make encoding software and players

16. Plaintext/Ciphertext Attacks • The plaintext is always available for the MP3 file so, therefore, any attackers can see the additions the watermark makes (and remove them) • Ease of removal is variable, depending on the algorithm used

17. Universal Acceptance • As long as users can rip MP3’s without watermarks, piracy will always proliferate • If the MP3 players and portable devices play unwatermarked MP3’s, there’s no point in having the system in place at all

18. Conclusion • Watermarking is useful in a lot of circumstances. Digital music isn’t one of them. • If someone wants to remove music watermarking, with all current algorithms, they will be able to. • RIP Napster. We’ll miss you.