Digital audio watermarking for broadcast monitoring and content identification

Copyright legislation was prompted exactly 300 years ago by a desire to protect authors against exploitation of their work by others. With regard to modern content owners, Digital Rights Management (DRM) issues have become very important since the advent of the Internet. Piracy, or illegal copying, costs content owners billions of dollars every year. DRM is just one tool that can assist content owners in exercising their rights. Two categories of DRM technologies have evolved in digital signal processing recently, namely digital fingerprinting and digital watermarking. One area of Copyright that is consistently overlooked in DRM developments is 'Public Performance'. The research described in this thesis analysed the administration of public performance rights within the music industry in general, with specific focus on the collective rights and broadcasting sectors in Ireland. Limitations in the administration of artists' rights were identified. The impact of these limitations on the careers of developing artists was evaluated. A digital audio watermarking scheme is proposed that would meet the requirements of both the broadcast and collective rights sectors. The goal of the scheme is to embed a standard identifier within an audio signal via modification of its spectral properties in such a way that it would be robust and perceptually transparent. Modification of the audio signal spectrum was attempted in a variety of ways. A method based on a super-resolution frequency identification technique was found to be most effective. The watermarking scheme was evaluated for robustness and found to be extremely effective in recovering embedded watermarks in music signals using a semi-blind decoding process. The final digital audio watermarking algorithm proposed facilitates the development of other applications in the domain of broadcast monitoring for the purposes of equitable royalty distribution along with additional applications and extension to other domains

Acute fever without source: 3-36 months

This issue of eMedRef provides information to clinicians on the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and therapeutics of acute fever without cause in young children

Digital audio watermarking with semi-blind detection for in-car music content identification

Recent developments in audio watermarking techniques have gone some way towards promoting an industry-wide acceptance of digital audio watermarking as a process that will eventually be used in all audio (and video) production. The predominant focus of such watermarking research has been in the area of content protection, because the prevention of illegal copying is an area of concern for content owners. However, digital audio watermarking may also be used for other purposes, such as the added-value option of real-time content identification of music. While computer-based users of music enjoy the opportunity to identify unknown audio using online tools, identification of audio in an offline domestic or in-car scenario is not so easily achieved. This paper discusses with an area of digital audio watermarking that would facilitate real-time in-car identification of the artists, title and/or other meta-data relating to music being broadcast by radio

Limitations in the Distribution of Public Performance Royalties in Ireland

This paper provides an overview of the administration of Public Performance copyright in Ireland, while considering the motivation behind the introduction of Copyright legislation almost 300 years ago. We explore the idea that the administration of modern copyright helps to create the same environment that existed prior to legislation for copyright. We suggest a technological means by which the problems experienced by developing artists, in terms of the administration of public performance licensing, might be addressed

300 years of copyright: have we gone full circle? On the use of technology to address limitations in distributing public performance broadcast royalties.

This paper briefly examines the concept and rationale of Copyright at the time of its inception and considers whether current legislation and, more distinctly, the administration of some of the rights specified by Copyright legislation has created a situation whereby authors of works in the music industry are being adversely affected and even exploited by such schemes thereby completing the circle by returning many authors to the point which made Copyright legislation necessary. This paper also outlines the design and implementation of a completely automatic, open and transparent blind-detection digital audio watermarking system that will enable automatic monitoring and reporting of public performance of both digital and analogue radio and television transmissions using modern computer technology in order to generate accurate royalty distributions to ‘authors’ in order to administer their rights more equitably

Limitations in the Distribution of Public Performance Royalties in Ireland

This paper provides an overview of the administration of Public Performance copyright in Ireland, while considering the motivation behind the introduction of Copyright legislation almost 300 years ago. We explore the idea that the administration of modern copyright helps to create the same environment that existed prior to legislation for copyright. We suggest a technological means by which the problems experienced by developing artists, in terms of the administration of public performance licensing, might be addressed

Which diuretics are safe and effective for patients with a sulfa allergy?

Diuretics that do not contain a sulfonamide group (eg, amiloride hydrochloride, eplerenone, ethacrynic acid, spironolactone, and triamterene) are safe for patients with an allergy to sulfa. The evidence is contra-dictory as to whether a history of allergy to sulfonamide antibiotics increases the risk of subsequent allergic reactions to commonly used sulfonamide-containing diuretics (eg, carbonic anhydrase inhibitors, loop diuretics, and thiazides) (strength of recommendation: C, based on case series and poor quality case-control and cohort studies)

Perceptually Transparent Audio Watermarking of Real Audio Signals Based On The CSPE Algorithm

This paper outlines a transparent and accurate digital audio watermarking system for real audio signals. Based on work in an earlier paper the current work modifies candidate component selection criteria; introduces a component verification process to guarantee accurate recovery of the watermark; identifies and removes audible ‘click’ phenomena. Test results on real music signals have shown that this watermarking algorithm is transparent and is highly precise in recovering the embedded watermark

A robust audio watermarking scheme based on reduced singular value decomposition and distortion removal

This paper presents a blind audio watermarking algorithm based on the reduced singular value decomposition(RSVD). A new observation on one of the resulting unitary matrices is uncovered. The proposed scheme manipulates coefficients based on this observation in order to embed watermark bits. To preserve audio fidelity a threshold- based distortion control technique is applied and this is further supplemented by distortion suppression utilizing psychoacoustic principles. Test results on real music signals show that this watermarking scheme is in the range of imperceptibility for human hearing, is accurate and also robust against MP3 compression at various bit rates as well as other selected attacks. The data payload is comparatively high compared to existing audio watermarking schemes

Digital Audio Watermarking by Magnitude Modification of Frequency Components Using the CSPE Algorithm

In this paper we describe a process whereby the magnitude of either one or two frequency components of a signal is modified in order that it may be used to encode a hidden message within a signal in such a way as the casual observer would have no way of noticing the presence of a hidden message. Previous work has used filtering and signal addition to achieve the same goals. The current work improves on this by using a recent super-resolution component-identification technique to isolate the components to modify, limiting the impact on the quality of the signal