Abstract
As a general and effective protection measure for copyright violations which occur with the use of digital technologies including peer to peer (P2P) networks, copyright owners from the cultural sector often use Digital Rights Management systems and digital watermarking techniques to encrypt copyright information with the cultural content. In other cases copyright owners restrict or even block access to the digital cultural content through the Internet and the P2P infrastructure. This chapter claims that DRM and P2P can be quite complementary. Specifically, pa P2P infrastructure is presented which allows broad digital cultural content exchange while at the same time supporting copyright protection and management through watermarking technologies for digital images.
TopTheoretical Background
The proposed system is setting a new basis for the close cooperation of the two different scientific areas of DRM and P2P aiming at exploiting the distributed computing nature of P2P networks for efficient digital rights protection and management. As a background knowledge the basics of the two different technologies are being presented.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Peer to Peer Networks: Peer-to-Peer (P2P) is a relatively recent, highly distributed computing paradigm that enables sharing of resources and services through direct communication between peers.
Watermark Embedding: The process of watermark embedding is using a watermarking key and the watermarking algorithm, to produce the watermarked digital image. The embedding method vary based on which image domain is being processed, e.g. the space, frequency domain or the wavelets. Depending on the embedding method detectable (single-bit) or readable (multi-bit) watermarks are being incorporated to the digital images.
NBDT P2P Structure: Provides a tree-like structure for the P2P network upon which key-based searching can be performed. In terms of bandwidth usage, searching scales very well since no broadcasting or other bandwidth consuming activities take place during searches.
Detectable Watermark: A digital watermark which when detected exists or no in the digital image (Boolean Yes or No detection result).
Watermarking: The watermarking algorithms are applying watermarks (invisible information in bitstreams) to digital images.
Readable Watermark: A digital watermarking which when detected the information incorporated is being read (e.g. the identity of the copyright owner).
P2P Key Update: Whenever a peer is inserted or deleted from the network a P2P key update process has to be initiated so as to ensure data integrity between the peers.
Watermark Detection: The watermark detection is using usually the same watermarking key and the reverse embedding method to detect if a watermark exists or no in the digital image (in the detectable case) or to read the information incorporated into the digital image (in the readable case).
Digital Rights Management: Covers the description, recognition, protection, control, commerce, monitoring and tracking of all the possible usage types concerning digital content - including the relationship management between the digital object’s owners.