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Outline
Introduction, Applications Characteristics and classification Popular techniques for watermarking

Definition: A digital watermark is a digital signal or pattern inserted into a digital document such as text, graphics or multimedia, and carries information unique to the copyright owner, the creator of the document or the authorized consumer.

Example

Watermarking Vs Encryption
Encryption involves document transformation

so that the contents of the document are not visible without a decryption key Watermarking leaves the original file/image intact and recognizable

Digital Watermarking Applications

Ownership Assertion
A uses a private key to generate a watermark and embeds it in

the document A makes the watermarked image publicly available B claims that he owns the image derived from the public image A produces the unmarked original and establishes the presence of As watermark

Fingerprinting
Used to avoid unauthorized duplication and distribution. A distinct watermark (a fingerprint) is embedded in each copy of

the data. If unauthorized copies are found, the origin of the copy can be determined by retrieving the fingerprint.

Digital Watermarking Applications (2)

Authentication & integrity verification Watermarks should be able to detect even the slightest change in the document. A unique key associated with the source is used the create the watermark and then embed in the document. This key is then used to extract the watermark and the integrity of the document verified on the basis of the integrity of the watermark.

Digital Watermarking Applications (3)

Content labeling Bits embedded in the data, comprise an annotation, giving some more information about the data. Digital cameras annotate images with the time and date, when the photograph was taken. Medical imaging machines annotate images (XRays) with patients name, ID.

Digital Watermarking Applications (4)

Usage control & Copy protection Digital watermark inserted to indicate the number of copies permitted. Every time a copy is made the hardware modifies the watermark and at the same time it would not create any more copies of the data. Commonly used in DVD technology. Content Protection Content owner might want to publicly and freely provide a preview of multimedia content being sold. To make the preview commercially useless, content is stamped with visible watermarks.
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Characteristics of Digital Watermarks

Readily Detectable: the data owner or an independent control

authority should easily detect it. Unambiguous: retrieval of it should unambiguously identify the data owner.

Robust: difficult to remove for an attacker, who would

like to destroy it in order to counterfeit the copyright of the data. Moreover, removal of it should cause a considerable degradation in the quality of the data. Visible watermarks should be visible enough to discourage theft.

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Digital Watermark Classification

Based on visibility of watermarks
- Visible Watermarks - Invisible Watermarks

Based on the content to be watermarked

- Text Watermarking - Image, Audio, Video Watermarking
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Techniques for Texts

Text Line Coding: Change the spacing between lines. Word-shift Coding: Change the spacing between words. Character Encoding: Alter the shapes of characters.
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Word-shift coding example

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Easily defeated
Retyping the text destroys the watermark Word processors change the spacing

between words and lines Character encoding can be defeated by changing the font

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Techniques for Images

Spatial Watermarking: Just change some of the values of

the pixels in the lower bit plane; e.g., Change some of the bits from 1 to 0 or 0 to 1.
Frequency Domain Watermarking: First convert the

image to the frequency domain and then apply the watermark in the low frequency regions.

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Checksum Technique for images

Watermark is formed from the 7 most significant bits of

each pixel. Eight 7-bit segments (from eight different pixels) are concatenated and the final checksum is thus 56-bit. Locations of the pixels that are to contain one bit each of the checksum are randomly chosen. These pixel locations along with the checksum form the watermark, W. Last bit of each pixel is then changed to the corresponding checksum bit.

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Bavarian couple

Original

Watermarked Version
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Advantages/Disadvantag es
Embedding the checksum only changes (on average) half

the number of pixel. So less visual distortion. Can hold multiple watermarks as long as they dont overlap. Extremely simple and fast. Extremely fragile. Any change to the checksum causes the failure of the verification procedure. Forger could replace a section with another one of equal size and checksum. Entire watermark can be removed by removing the LSB plane. Cant survive lossy compression.

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Conclusion
First generation of copyright marking

schemes is not strong enough Existing schemes provide only limited measures of marking Can only meet few requirements at a time
Tradeoff - Bandwidth vs. robustness No single problem but a constellation!

Real problem: watermark restoration

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Q&A

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