MPhil Thesis Proposal Defence


"Offline Copyrights Protection under Watermark Attacks"

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 digital 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 digital licenses is
protected by the public key infrastructure (PKI).



Date:			Tuesday, 31 October 2000

Time:			10:00a.m.-12:00noon
	
Venue:			Room 4480
			Lifts 25-26

Chairman:		Dr. Cunsheng Ding

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


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