Digital Watermarking: An Overview

In this paper we describe a general framework for image copyright protection through digital watermarking. In particular we present the main features of an efficient watermarking scheme, discuss robustness issues and describe the three main stages of a watermarking algorithm namely watermark generation, embedding and detection. 1 INTRODUCTION The rapid evolution of digital technology makes the development of reliable and robust schemes for protecting digital still images, audio and video from piracy a matter of urgency. Piracy attacks include illegal access to transmitted data in networks, data content modification and production and retransmission of illegitimate copies [1, 2]. The impact of such attacks might be very large both in financial (profit losses by unauthorised access and use of data) and security terms. Data transmitted through network communication lines may be protected from unauthorised receivers by applying techniques based on cryptography [3]. Only persons, who poss..