MPhil Thesis Defence


"Enforcement of Digital Rights Management using Offline Watermark
Detection and Public Key Infrastructure"

By

Mr. Ka-Cheong Wong


Abstract

Copyrights of digital content can be protected through the use of
watermarks. Watermark detection, however, faces one major technical
challenge. Existing detection mechanisms require the knowledge of a
detection key, which may also be used for watermark removal. Due to issues
of performance and scalability, watermark detection is often offline and
realized at the user's end. This makes the detection mechanism vulnerable
to attacks and thereby jeopardizes the confidentiality of detection keys.
As such, mechanisms of copyright protection may not rely on the robustness
of watermarks. In this paper, we propose an offline mechanism to reinforce
copyright protection for situations where watermark robustness cannot be
guaranteed. On purchasing a piece of digital content, a consumer receives
a unique license in a signed license from the associated content
distributor. The license will be used for checking the rights of the
consumer as well as the genuineness of the watermarks. The integrity of
licenses is protected by the public key infrastructure (PKI).



Date:			Monday, 15 January 2001 (NO CHANGE)

Time:			9:30a.m.-11:30a.m.
	
Venue:			Room 1505 (NO CHANGE)
			Lifts 25-26

Chairman:		Dr. Gary S. Chan

Committee Members:	Dr. Shing-Chi Cheung (Supervisor)
			Dr. Dit-Yan Yeung
			Dr. James S. Kwok


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