A Survey on Piracy Protection Techniques in Digital Cinema Watermarking Schemes

Watermarking is used in several areas such as CDNs (Content Delivery Networks), as part of the rights management system for counterfeit prevention. Watermarking schemes need some additional features in order to be used in digital cinema. In fact, extra watermarks are added to movies by cinema projectors in projection time, which help identify the cinema hall in which the illegal copy has been recorded. But distortions caused by hand vibrations and the point of view angle make it difficult to recover the watermark. This makes it necessary to be distortion-resistant for the watermarking schemes used in digital cinema. On the other hand, theatre owners would like to locate the camcorder that has recorded the pirate copy. This requires watermarking schemes to be able to estimate the distance and angle using the distributed pirate copy. In this chapter, we present a review on watermarking techniques specifically designed to attack the aforementioned problems

Framework for privacy-aware content distribution in peer-to- peer networks with copyright protection

The use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks for multimedia distribution has spread out globally in recent years. This mass popularity is primarily driven by the efficient distribution of content, also giving rise to piracy and copyright infringement as well as privacy concerns. An end user (buyer) of a P2P content distribution system does not want to reveal his/her identity during a transaction with a content owner (merchant), whereas the merchant does not want the buyer to further redistribute the content illegally. Therefore, there is a strong need for content distribution mechanisms over P2P networks that do not pose security and privacy threats to copyright holders and end users, respectively. However, the current systems being developed to provide copyright and privacy protection to merchants and end users employ cryptographic mechanisms, which incur high computational and communication costs, making these systems impractical for the distribution of big files, such as music albums or movies.El uso de soluciones de igual a igual (peer-to-peer, P2P) para la distribución multimedia se ha extendido mundialmente en los últimos años. La amplia popularidad de este paradigma se debe, principalmente, a la distribución eficiente de los contenidos, pero también da lugar a la piratería, a la violación del copyright y a problemas de privacidad. Un usuario final (comprador) de un sistema de distribución de contenidos P2P no quiere revelar su identidad durante una transacción con un propietario de contenidos (comerciante), mientras que el comerciante no quiere que el comprador pueda redistribuir ilegalmente el contenido más adelante. Por lo tanto, existe una fuerte necesidad de mecanismos de distribución de contenidos por medio de redes P2P que no supongan un riesgo de seguridad y privacidad a los titulares de derechos y los usuarios finales, respectivamente. Sin embargo, los sistemas actuales que se desarrollan con el propósito de proteger el copyright y la privacidad de los comerciantes y los usuarios finales emplean mecanismos de cifrado que implican unas cargas computacionales y de comunicaciones muy elevadas que convierten a estos sistemas en poco prácticos para distribuir archivos de gran tamaño, tales como álbumes de música o películas.L'ús de solucions d'igual a igual (peer-to-peer, P2P) per a la distribució multimèdia s'ha estès mundialment els darrers anys. L'àmplia popularitat d'aquest paradigma es deu, principalment, a la distribució eficient dels continguts, però també dóna lloc a la pirateria, a la violació del copyright i a problemes de privadesa. Un usuari final (comprador) d'un sistema de distribució de continguts P2P no vol revelar la seva identitat durant una transacció amb un propietari de continguts (comerciant), mentre que el comerciant no vol que el comprador pugui redistribuir il·legalment el contingut més endavant. Per tant, hi ha una gran necessitat de mecanismes de distribució de continguts per mitjà de xarxes P2P que no comportin un risc de seguretat i privadesa als titulars de drets i els usuaris finals, respectivament. Tanmateix, els sistemes actuals que es desenvolupen amb el propòsit de protegir el copyright i la privadesa dels comerciants i els usuaris finals fan servir mecanismes d'encriptació que impliquen unes càrregues computacionals i de comunicacions molt elevades que fan aquests sistemes poc pràctics per a distribuir arxius de grans dimensions, com ara àlbums de música o pel·lícules

Survey of Transportation of Adaptive Multimedia Streaming service in Internet

[DE] World Wide Web is the greatest boon towards the technological advancement of modern era. Using the benefits of Internet globally, anywhere and anytime, users can avail the benefits of accessing live and on demand video services. The streaming media systems such as YouTube, Netflix, and Apple Music are reining the multimedia world with frequent popularity among users. A key concern of quality perceived for video streaming applications over Internet is the Quality of Experience (QoE) that users go through. Due to changing network conditions, bit rate and initial delay and the multimedia file freezes or provide poor video quality to the end users, researchers across industry and academia are explored HTTP Adaptive Streaming (HAS), which split the video content into multiple segments and offer the clients at varying qualities. The video player at the client side plays a vital role in buffer management and choosing the appropriate bit rate for each such segment of video to be transmitted. A higher bit rate transmitted video pauses in between whereas, a lower bit rate video lacks in quality, requiring a tradeoff between them. The need of the hour was to adaptively varying the bit rate and video quality to match the transmission media conditions. Further, The main aim of this paper is to give an overview on the state of the art HAS techniques across multimedia and networking domains. A detailed survey was conducted to analyze challenges and solutions in adaptive streaming algorithms, QoE, network protocols, buffering and etc. It also focuses on various challenges on QoE influence factors in a fluctuating network condition, which are often ignored in present HAS methodologies. Furthermore, this survey will enable network and multimedia researchers a fair amount of understanding about the latest happenings of adaptive streaming and the necessary improvements that can be incorporated in future developments.Abdullah, MTA.; Lloret, J.; Canovas Solbes, A.; García-García, L. (2017). Survey of Transportation of Adaptive Multimedia Streaming service in Internet. Network Protocols and Algorithms. 9(1-2):85-125. doi:10.5296/npa.v9i1-2.12412S8512591-

Recent Trends in Communication Networks

In recent years there has been many developments in communication technology. This has greatly enhanced the computing power of small handheld resource-constrained mobile devices. Different generations of communication technology have evolved. This had led to new research for communication of large volumes of data in different transmission media and the design of different communication protocols. Another direction of research concerns the secure and error-free communication between the sender and receiver despite the risk of the presence of an eavesdropper. For the communication requirement of a huge amount of multimedia streaming data, a lot of research has been carried out in the design of proper overlay networks. The book addresses new research techniques that have evolved to handle these challenges

SLEPX: An Efficient Lightweight Cipher for Visual Protection of Scalable HEVC Extension

This paper proposes a lightweight cipher scheme aimed at the scalable extension of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) codec, referred to as the Scalable HEVC (SHVC) standard. This stream cipher, Symmetric Cipher for Lightweight Encryption based on Permutation and EXlusive OR (SLEPX), applies Selective Encryption (SE) over suitable coding syntax elements in the SHVC layers. This is achieved minimal computational complexity and delay. The algorithm also conserves most SHVC functionalities, i.e. preservation of bit-length, decoder format-compliance, and error resilience. For comparative analysis, results were taken and compared with other state-of-art ciphers i.e. Exclusive-OR (XOR) and the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The performance of SLEPX is also compared with existing video SE solutions to confirm the efficiency of the adopted scheme. The experimental results demonstrate that SLEPX is as secure as AES in terms of visual protection, while computationally efficient comparable with a basic XOR cipher. Visual quality assessment, security analysis and extensive cryptanalysis (based on numerical values of selected binstrings) also showed the effectiveness of SLEPX’s visual protection scheme for SHVC compared to previously-employed cryptographic technique

Enhanced Multimedia Exchanges over the Internet

Although the Internet was not originally designed for exchanging multimedia streams, consumers heavily depend on it for audiovisual data delivery. The intermittent nature of multimedia traffic, the unguaranteed underlying communication infrastructure, and dynamic user behavior collectively result in the degradation of Quality-of-Service (QoS) and Quality-of-Experience (QoE) perceived by end-users. Consequently, the volume of signalling messages is inevitably increased to compensate for the degradation of the desired service qualities. Improved multimedia services could leverage adaptive streaming as well as blockchain-based solutions to enhance media-rich experiences over the Internet at the cost of increased signalling volume. Many recent studies in the literature provide signalling reduction and blockchain-based methods for authenticated media access over the Internet while utilizing resources quasi-efficiently. To further increase the efficiency of multimedia communications, novel signalling overhead and content access latency reduction solutions are investigated in this dissertation including: (1) the first two research topics utilize steganography to reduce signalling bandwidth utilization while increasing the capacity of the multimedia network; and (2) the third research topic utilizes multimedia content access request management schemes to guarantee throughput values for servicing users, end-devices, and the network. Signalling of multimedia streaming is generated at every layer of the communication protocol stack; At the highest layer, segment requests are generated, and at the lower layers, byte tracking messages are exchanged. Through leveraging steganography, essential signalling information is encoded within multimedia payloads to reduce the amount of resources consumed by non-payload data. The first steganographic solution hides signalling messages within multimedia payloads, thereby freeing intermediate node buffers from queuing non-payload packets. Consequently, source nodes are capable of delivering control information to receiving nodes at no additional network overhead. A utility function is designed to minimize the volume of overhead exchanged while minimizing visual artifacts. Therefore, the proposed scheme is designed to leverage the fidelity of the multimedia stream to reduce the largest amount of control overhead with the lowest negative visual impact. The second steganographic solution enables protocol translation through embedding packet header information within payload data to alternatively utilize lightweight headers. The protocol translator leverages a proposed utility function to enable the maximum number of translations while maintaining QoS and QoE requirements in terms of packet throughput and playback bit-rate. As the number of multimedia users and sources increases, decentralized content access and management over a blockchain-based system is inevitable. Blockchain technologies suffer from large processing latencies; consequently reducing the throughput of a multimedia network. Reducing blockchain-based access latencies is therefore essential to maintaining a decentralized scalable model with seamless functionality and efficient utilization of resources. Adapting blockchains to feeless applications will then port the utility of ledger-based networks to audiovisual applications in a faultless manner. The proposed transaction processing scheme will enable ledger maintainers in sustaining desired throughputs necessary for delivering expected QoS and QoE values for decentralized audiovisual platforms. A block slicing algorithm is designed to ensure that the ledger maintenance strategy is benefiting the operations of the blockchain-based multimedia network. Using the proposed algorithm, the throughput and latency of operations within the multimedia network are then maintained at a desired level

MediaSync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization

This book provides an approachable overview of the most recent advances in the fascinating field of media synchronization (mediasync), gathering contributions from the most representative and influential experts. Understanding the challenges of this field in the current multi-sensory, multi-device, and multi-protocol world is not an easy task. The book revisits the foundations of mediasync, including theoretical frameworks and models, highlights ongoing research efforts, like hybrid broadband broadcast (HBB) delivery and users' perception modeling (i.e., Quality of Experience or QoE), and paves the way for the future (e.g., towards the deployment of multi-sensory and ultra-realistic experiences). Although many advances around mediasync have been devised and deployed, this area of research is getting renewed attention to overcome remaining challenges in the next-generation (heterogeneous and ubiquitous) media ecosystem. Given the significant advances in this research area, its current relevance and the multiple disciplines it involves, the availability of a reference book on mediasync becomes necessary. This book fills the gap in this context. In particular, it addresses key aspects and reviews the most relevant contributions within the mediasync research space, from different perspectives. Mediasync: Handbook on Multimedia Synchronization is the perfect companion for scholars and practitioners that want to acquire strong knowledge about this research area, and also approach the challenges behind ensuring the best mediated experiences, by providing the adequate synchronization between the media elements that constitute these experiences

Improving Content Delivery and Service Discovery in Networks

Production and consumption of multimedia content on the Internet is rising, fueled by the demand for content from services such as YouTube, Netflix and Facebook video. The Internet is shifting from host-based to content-centric networking. At the same time, users are shifting away from a homogeneous desktop computing environment to using a heterogeneous mix of devices, such as smartphones, tablets and thin clients, all of which allow users to consume data on the move using wireless and cellular data networks. The popularity of these new class of devices has, in turn, increased demand for multimedia content by mobile users. The emergence of rich Internet applications and the widespread adoption and use of High Definition (HD) video has also placed higher pressure on the service providers and the core Internet backbone, forcing service providers to respond to increased bandwidth use in such networks. In my thesis, I aim to provide clarity and insight into the usage of core networking protocols and multimedia consumption on both mobile and wireless networks, as well as the network core. I also present research prototypes for potential solutions to some of the problems caused by the increased multimedia consumption on the Internet

Digital Rights Management and Consumer Acceptability: A Multi-Disciplinary Discussion of Consumer Concerns and Expectations

The INDICARE project – the Informed Dialogue about Consumer Acceptability of DRM Solutions in Europe – has been set up to raise awareness about consumer and user issues of Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions. One of the main goals of the INDICARE project is to contribute to the consensus-building among multiple players with heterogeneous interests in the digital environment. To promote this process and to contribute to the creation of a common level of understanding is the aim of the present report. It provides an overview of consumer concerns and expectations regarding DRMs, and discusses the findings from a social, legal, technical and business perspective. A general overview of the existing EC initiatives shows that questions of consumer acceptability of DRM have only recently begun to draw wider attention. A review of the relevant statements, studies and reports confirms that awareness of consumer concerns is still at a low level. Five major categories of concerns have been distinguished so far: (1) fair conditions of use and access to digital content, (2) privacy, (3) interoperability, (4) transparency and (5) various aspects of consumer friendliness. From the legal point of view, many of the identified issues go beyond the scope of copyright law, i.e. the field of law where DRM was traditionally discussed. Often they are a matter of general or sector-specific consumer protection law. Furthermore, it is still unclear to what extent technology and an appropriate design of technical solutions can provide an answer to some of the concerns of consumers. One goal of the technical chapter was exactly to highlight some of these technical possibilities. Finally, it is shown that consumer acceptability of DRM is important for the economic success of different business models based on DRM. Fair and responsive DRM design can be a profitable strategy, however DRM-free alternatives do exist too.Digital Rights Management; consumers; Intellectual property; business models