1. Rob Farraher Ken Pickering Lim Vu
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.