Protecting Multimedia Authenticity with Vaccination Of Electronic Bacteria Watermarks

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 project develops a novel method to protect the authenticity of multimedia. The Internet allows cost-free distribution of multimedia products of all sorts, from simple documents to music, video, or virtual reality. Free product samples become the gravity for snowballing success. Yet the same medium is plagued with theft and piracy of copyrighted media. The resolution of this dilemma is critical for inventors and copyright holders, and indeed for the growth of e-commerce as a whole. Media duplication is critical for exposure as long as the author, artist or company is cited. This novel research embeds three markings in multimedia by an independent component analysis (ICA) blind mixing algorithm: a visible logo or advertisement, an invisible watermark, and an invisible electronic bacteria code. The logo serves as a "vaccination" against a dormant digital "electronic bacteria" code. Once the logo is removed the bacteria code awakens and degrades only the multimedia. The invisible watermark enables retrieval by hardware media players and tracking. The product of this research is twofold: intellectual property and software tools. Revenue originates from the sale of advertisement space, IP licensing, and sale of software to the content producers.