DataHiding^TM Application Framework

DataHiding is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation for products, solutions, and services based on invisible and inaudible watermarking technology. Applications of DataHiding^TM for security and management of multimedia content can be classified into the following four frameworks:

The control/filter framework is recommended for copy protection in the consumer area, since it does not need any personal information for tracing and does not violate consumers' privacy. Each of the application frameworks is described below.

Service/Link

For enterprise content management such as archive file servers

In the service/link framework, a detection system extracts embedded information from digital content to offer it to a viewer or a listener for his or her use. The extracted information may be a caption, annotation, content identifier, or ownership information. The content identifier may be used for connecting physical videotapes to a document database. The content identifier in digital video may be used as auxiliary information for editing a TV program. The content identifier notifies users of scene changes, category changes, and warnings of rights management clearance.

This framework assumes that content users will respect copyright and obey the rules. This works for educated employees of a trusted enterprise, because they generally value their organization's public reputation too much to risk infringing copyright. However, the following frameworks may also be required, because of sophisticated human nature.

Monitoring/Auditing

For rights management within and among enterprises

In the monitoring/auditing framework, a detection system is used to automatically monitor or audit any infringement of copyright. According to the extracted information, the administrator of the monitoring system writes someone a letter asking him/her to remove illegal copies from a web site, or sues him/her for infringement of copyright. For any potential lawsuit, it may be necessary to embed personal tracking information into the delivered content to identify who has infringed copyright. This is acceptable between an enterprise and its employees and between enterprises. However, it is not desirable between consumers and enterprise, since consumers may consider it a violation of privacy.

Another interesting use of this framework is to monitor broadcast on the radio by means of the embedded watermark and distribute the copyright revenue to the composers and authors according to the frequency or duration of the broadcasts. Previously, composers, authors, and copyright agencies did not have any effective way of measuring how the copyright revenue from broadcasts should be distributed.

Control/Filter

For Rights Management in Consumer Devices and Web Sites

In the control/filter framework, a system automatically stops playing back, copying, printing, transmitting data, or uploading, according to the detected signal.

IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory was the first proposer of a control/filter framework in the world. In 1996, we proposed a framework for DVD copy protection at the DVD Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG). The content owner embeds invisible Copy Control Information (CCI) such as "Never Copy," "Copy Once," and "Copy Freely." If the DVD recorder finds "Never Copy" in the digital video stream, it stops recording. If the DVD player finds "Never Copy" in digital video stream of DVD-RAM, it stops playing back. If the DVD recorder finds "Copy Once" in the digital video stream, it updates the status to "Never Copy" before recording. This framework directly prevents unauthorized recording and playback of copyrighted digital video material, but does not require any personal information.

The future of rights management in the consumer area lies in the control/filtering framework, since this does not violate consumers' privacy. We now propose this framework for copy protection of both physically and electronically distributed content in the entire consumer area.

• Stop unauthorized recording and playback of copyrighted material in consumer devices

• Stop transmission of illegal copies in IEEE1394

• Stop uploading of illegal copies at web sites

This framework requires high technical reliability of watermark detection and, politically, standardization of watermarking technology for wide use in the consumer area.

Evidence

For Integrity of Multimedia Documents in Enterprises

In the evidence framework, a system embeds an invisible signature into digital photographs and scanned documents to verify their integrity and origins. The embedded signature survives file format conversion but is sensitive to tampering with digital photographs. We call this "tamper-detection" watermarking. The watermarking technology of IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory can embed an invisible signature directly into JPEG-encoded images and identify the locations of modification in both JPEG-encoded and JPEG-decoded images if there is any tampering. See the application story on DataHiding for the Insurance Claim Process.

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