Intellectual property protection systems and digital watermarking

Adequate protection of digital copies of multimedia content - both audio and video - is a prerequisite to the distribution of this content over networks. Until recently digital audio and video content has been protected by its size: it is difficult to distribute and store without compression. Modern compression algorithms allow substantial bitrate reduction while maintaining high-fidelity reproduction. If distribution of these algorithms is controlled, cleartext uncompressed content is still protected by its size. However, once the compression algorithms are generally available cleartext content becomes extremely vulnerable to piracy. In this paper we explore the implications of this vulnerability and discuss the use of compression and watermarking in the control of piracy.