Digital Watermarking Overview:
– History:
– Term ‘Digital Watermark’ coined by Andrew Tirkel and Charles Osborne in 1992.
– Successful embedding and extraction of a steganographic watermark demonstrated in 1993.
– Watermarks originated in 13th century Italy for paper identification.
– Watermarks used for identifying paper makers, preventing forgery, and manufacturer identification.
– Definition and Types:
– Digital watermarking is a technique to embed data into digital multimedia content.
– Watermarks can be visible or invisible.
– Two main types: visible (overlaid on content) and invisible (embedded within content).
– Invisible watermarks commonly used for copyright protection.
Applications of Digital Watermarking:
– Copyright protection.
– Source tracking for distribution identification.
– Broadcast monitoring for verifying video sources.
– Video authentication.
– Software crippling for encouraging full version purchases.
– Authentication and restoration of images in reversible data hiding.
– Relational databases for copyright protection, tamper detection, and traitor tracing.
Digital Watermarking Techniques:
– Embedding Methods:
– Spread-spectrum method (modestly robust, low information capacity).
– Quantization method (low robustness, high information capacity).
– Amplitude modulation method (additive modification in spatial domain).
– Frequency modulation, spatial domain, and transform domain techniques used for embedding.
– Classification:
– Robust watermarking for reliable detection after transformations.
– Imperceptible watermarking for visually equivalent watermarked content.
– Robust imperceptible watermarks for digital content protection.
– Various ways to classify digital watermarking techniques.
Challenges and Evaluation in Digital Watermarking:
– Balancing imperceptibility and robustness.
– Different compression algorithms affecting visibility and robustness.
– Challenges in maintaining robustness against various attacks.
– Evaluation strategies for designers and end-users.
– Parameter sets to determine the best watermarking algorithm.
Digital Watermarking Features and Capacity:
– Features:
– Cameras with security features like Epson and Kodak.
– Lossless watermarking for biometric identifier embedding.
– Transparent/translucent watermarks for consumer convenience.
– Different watermarks used based on fragility or robustness.
– Capacity:
– Length of embedded message determining digital watermarking schemes.
– Two main classes: zero-bit presence and multiple-bit watermarking schemes.
– Different information capacity and robustness levels for each scheme.
– Techniques for embedding watermarks using spread spectrum, quantization, and amplitude modulation methods.
A digital watermark is a kind of marker covertly embedded in a noise-tolerant signal such as audio, video or image data. It is typically used to identify ownership of the copyright of such signal. "Watermarking" is the process of hiding digital information in a carrier signal; the hidden information should, but does not need to, contain a relation to the carrier signal. Digital watermarks may be used to verify the authenticity or integrity of the carrier signal or to show the identity of its owners. It is prominently used for tracing copyright infringements and for banknote authentication.
Like traditional physical watermarks, digital watermarks are often only perceptible under certain conditions, e.g. after using some algorithm. If a digital watermark distorts the carrier signal in a way that it becomes easily perceivable, it may be considered less effective depending on its purpose. Traditional watermarks may be applied to visible media (like images or video), whereas in digital watermarking, the signal may be audio, pictures, video, texts or 3D models. A signal may carry several different watermarks at the same time. Unlike metadata that is added to the carrier signal, a digital watermark does not change the size of the carrier signal.
The needed properties of a digital watermark depend on the use case in which it is applied. For marking media files with copyright information, a digital watermark has to be rather robust against modifications that can be applied to the carrier signal. Instead, if integrity has to be ensured, a fragile watermark would be applied.
Both steganography and digital watermarking employ steganographic techniques to embed data covertly in noisy signals. While steganography aims for imperceptibility to human senses, digital watermarking tries to control the robustness as top priority.
Since a digital copy of data is the same as the original, digital watermarking is a passive protection tool. It just marks data, but does not degrade it or control access to the data.
One application of digital watermarking is source tracking. A watermark is embedded into a digital signal at each point of distribution. If a copy of the work is found later, then the watermark may be retrieved from the copy and the source of the distribution is known. This technique reportedly has been used to detect the source of illegally copied movies.
