Collusion-resistant watermarking and fingerprinting
First Claim
1. A method facilitating protection of digital goods, wherein the method is implemented by one or more computers executing computer-executable instructions stored in one or more computer-readable media, the method comprising:
- segmenting a digital good into multiple segments;
for each of a plurality of individual segments of the multiple segments, performing acts comprising;
obtaining a pseudorandom watermarking key;
combining the watermarking key with the digital good to embed a watermark in the digital good and associate the watermark with a particular individual segment;
producing a pseudorandom watermark carrier that is independent of the segment-associated watermark and the watermarking key;
generating an individualized detection key from the watermark carrier and the watermarking key, whereby the individualized detection key is associated with the segment-associated watermark for the particular individual segment, the individualized detection key being used for detecting the segment-associated watermark in the digital good;
associating the individualized detection key with a unique detection entity by associating the watermark carrier to the unique detection entity, wherein the unique detection entity uses the individualized detection key for detecting the segment-associated watermark in the digital good; and
identifying, by one or more of the computers, the watermark carrier used to generate the individualized detection key following an attempt to modify or remove the segment-associated watermark from the digital good.
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Abstract
An implementation of a technology is described herein that facilitates rights enforcement of digital goods using watermarks. More particularly, it is a fingerprinting technology for protecting digital goods by detecting collusion as a malicious attack and identifying the participating colluders. If a digital pirate breaks one client and enables this client to avoid watermark detection, all content (both marked/protected an unmarked/free) can be played as unmarked only on that particular client. However, to enable other clients to play content as unmarked, the digital pirate needs to collude the extracted detection keys from many clients in order to create content that can evade watermark detection on all clients. The described implementation significantly improves collusion resistance through a fingerprinting mechanism that can identify the members of a malicious coalition even when their numbers are several orders of magnitude greater than what conventional collusion-protection schemes can accomplish. However, in this scenario each member of the malicious coalition leaves a fingerprint in every digital good from which the estimated watermark is subtracted. Thus, like a burglar without gloves, the digital pirate leaves her fingerprints only when she commits a crime. This abstract itself is not intended to limit the scope of this patent. The scope of the present invention is pointed out in the appending claims.
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Citations
41 Claims
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1. A method facilitating protection of digital goods, wherein the method is implemented by one or more computers executing computer-executable instructions stored in one or more computer-readable media, the method comprising:
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segmenting a digital good into multiple segments; for each of a plurality of individual segments of the multiple segments, performing acts comprising; obtaining a pseudorandom watermarking key; combining the watermarking key with the digital good to embed a watermark in the digital good and associate the watermark with a particular individual segment; producing a pseudorandom watermark carrier that is independent of the segment-associated watermark and the watermarking key; generating an individualized detection key from the watermark carrier and the watermarking key, whereby the individualized detection key is associated with the segment-associated watermark for the particular individual segment, the individualized detection key being used for detecting the segment-associated watermark in the digital good; associating the individualized detection key with a unique detection entity by associating the watermark carrier to the unique detection entity, wherein the unique detection entity uses the individualized detection key for detecting the segment-associated watermark in the digital good; and identifying, by one or more of the computers, the watermark carrier used to generate the individualized detection key following an attempt to modify or remove the segment-associated watermark from the digital good. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
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9. One or more computer-readable storage media having computer-executable instructions stored thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to carry out steps for facilitating protection of digital goods, the steps comprising:
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segmenting a digital good into multiple segments; for each of a plurality of individual segments of the multiple segments, performing acts comprising; obtaining a pseudorandom watermarking key; combining the watermarking key with the digital good to embed a watermark in the digital good and associate the watermark with a particular individual segment; producing a pseudorandom watermark carrier that is independent of the segment-associated watermark and the watermarking key; generating an individualized detection key from the watermark carrier and the watermarking key, whereby the individualized detection key is associated with the segment-associated watermark for the particular individual segment, the individualized detection key being used for detecting the segment-associated watermark in the digital good; associating the individualized detection key with a unique detection entity by correlating the watermark carrier to the unique detection entity, wherein the unique detection entity uses the individualized detection key for detecting the segment-associated watermark in the digital good; and identifying the detection entity associated with the individualized detection key via the watermark carrier when the individualized detection key is used in a collusion attack on the digital good having the watermark embedded therein. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A method facilitating protection of digital goods, wherein the method is implemented by one or more computers executing computer-executable instructions stored in one or more computer-readable media, the method comprising:
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obtaining a pseudorandom watermarking key; producing a pseudorandom watermark carrier that is independent of the watermarking key, the watermark carrier being associated with a unique detection entity used for detecting a watermark in a digital good; generating an individualized detection key from the watermark carrier and the watermarking key, said individualized detection key being used by the detection entity for detecting the watermark when the watermark is embedded in the digital good; marking the digital good by combining the watermarking key with the digital good for embedding the watermark in the digital good; associating the individualized detection key with the unique detection entity by the association of the watermark carrier to the detection entity; and identifying, by one of the computers, the watermark carrier used to generate the individualized detection key following an attempt to modify or remove the watermark from the digital good. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26)
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27. One or more computer-readable storage media having computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to carry out steps comprising:
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producing a pseudorandom secret watermarking key using a pseudorandom key generator; marking a digital good by combining the secret watermarking key with the digital good to produce a marked digital good having a watermark embedded therein; producing a plurality of pseudorandom watermark carriers that are independent of the secret watermarking key, the watermark carriers being stored in a memory; associating each watermark carrier to a unique watermark detection device out of a plurality of unique watermark detection devices; generating an individualized detection key from each of the watermark carriers and the secret watermarking key, whereby each individualized detection key is associated with the watermark for detecting the watermark; assigning one of each individualized detection key to the unique watermark detection device to which the corresponding watermark carrier was assigned for use in detecting the watermark in the marked digital good, wherein the marked digital good having the watermark embedded therein does not have any of the individualized detection keys or watermark carriers embedded therein; and associating each of the individualized detection keys with the corresponding unique watermark detection device by correlation of the corresponding watermark carrier to the unique detection device; and identifying one or more detection devices associated with one or more of the individualized detection keys via the corresponding watermark carrier when the one or more individualized detection keys are used in a collusion attack on the digital good having the watermark embedded therein. - View Dependent Claims (28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34)
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35. A system comprising:
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a key generator including a processor and a memory for producing a pseudorandom watermark carrier that is independent of a pseudorandom watermark and corresponding watermarking key, the watermark carrier being stored in the memory and related-associated with a unique detection entity, wherein the key generator is configured to generate an individualized detection key from the watermark carrier and the watermarking key, wherein the individualized detection key is associated with the uniaue detection entity by the associating the watermark carrier with the detection entity; a marker for combining the watermarking key with a digital good for embedding a watermark into a digital good to produce a marked digital good; and a watermark detector associated with the detection entity and configured to use the individualized detection key to detect the watermark in the marked digital and a fingerprint detector for identifying the detection entity associated with the individualized detection key via the watermark carrier when the individualized detection key is used in a collusion attack on the marked digital good. - View Dependent Claims (36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41)
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Specification