Embedding Robust Labels Into Images For Copyright Protection

This paper describes a set of novel steganographic methods to secretly embed robust labels into image data for identifying image copyright holder and original distributor in digital networked environment. The embedded label is undetectable, unremovable and unalterable. Furthermore it can survive processing which does not seriously reduce the quality of the image, such as lossy image compression, low pass filtering and image format conversions. 1 Introduction The wide use of digitally formatted audio, video and printed information in network environment has been slowed down by the lack of adequate protection on them. Developers and publishers hesitate to distribute their sensitive or valuable materials because of the easiness of illicit copying and dissemination [3],[6],[7]. Compared to ordinary paper form information, digitized multimedia information (image, text, audio, video) provides many advantages, such as easy and inexpensive duplication and re-use, less expensive and more flexi..