Chapter 13: Intellectual Property Protection

In the digital world we live in today, intellectual copyright protection is becoming an increasingly important topic. This is because digital data is particularly simple to copy and redistribute (or resell) without any loss of quality. In this chapter, we address intellectual copyright protection. More specifically , we introduce the topic in Section 13.1, elaborate on usage control and digital copyright labeling techniques in Section 13.2 and 13.3, overview and briefly discuss the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in Section 13.4, and draw some conclusions in Section 13.5. Note that this chapter only provides a brief introduction and overview about the topic, and that additional and complementary resources are necessary to work in this area.

13.1    Introduction

Intellectual property protection is a legitimate goal. The need for intellectual copyright protection has been around since the creation of technologies that allow anybody to make copies of specific content [1]. Three examples from the analog world illustrate this point:

1. The invention of the printing press was followed by concerns regarding the need for intellectual copyright protection. Note that the printing press provided the ability to produce multiple copies of a document at relatively low cost (as compared to the value of the document being copied ). Fortunately, piracy of documents by way of printing press could easily be stopped because of the effort that was required, the special equipment that was needed, and the fact that the resulting copies were not exactly the same as the original documents.

2. The invention of various recording technologies for audio and video streams was followed by concerns regarding the need for intellectual copyright protection. In the case of vinyl records, making copies also required special equipment, and copies were not as good as the original records (sometimes this argument was also used to promote special editions). With the advent of magnetic tape (for both audio and video recording), however, the piracy potential increased tremendously, mainly because the copying effort was small and the equipment was ubiquitous. Fortunately (at least from the content provider s point of view), the barrier to widespread piracy of such content is the progressively degraded quality of the content with each generation of copies. A copy of a copy of a copy of an original item contains all the noise and defects introduced and amplified at each step.

3. The possibility to make photostatic copies of paper documents has also caused some concerns regarding the need for copyright protection. Again, even the highest-quality copy of a document is degraded, or at least changed, because in some cases photocopiers make things more readable, increase contrast, or introduce other improvements that are nonetheless changes from the original document.

Today, the same thing happens to technologies that allow anybody to make copies of digital data. Digital data, in turn , may encode anything (e.g., text, graphics, images, audio, video, or software) and the technologies to copy the data remain the same in either case. In fact, the digital representation and distribution of data has increased the potential for misuse and theft, and has significantly intensified the problems associated with copyright protection and enforcing these rights. The problems are rooted from the intrinsic characteristics of digital data, namely that making and distributing a copy is easy, inexpensive, and fast, and that each copy is identical to the original.

The market for digital data is expected to grow very rapidly . Today, we see digital photographs, MP3 music files, DVD movies, pay TV, electronic books (e-books), and many other things that are marketed and deployed on a global scale. In the future, it is expected that anything that carries information will be digitized and sold in digital form. According to [2], the market for digital media is projected to be in the billions of dollars per year. This number may not be precise, but it may give a feeling about the scale.

Against this background, content providers and distributors of digital data are afraid of online services, and they are looking for technical approaches to address the challenge of intellectual copyright protection and enforcing these rights. In fact, intellectual copyright protection has found increased attention on electronic marketplaces , such as the WWW.

There are basically two technical approaches to address the challenge of intellectual copyright protection:

1. Usage control requires some hardware or software that is able to control the usage of the protected material. More specifically, it means that any usage of the protected material, such as viewing, playing, or printing, must be controlled and approved by authorized rendering hardware or software.

2. Digital watermarking techniques embed digital marks into protected material to designate copyright- related information, such as origin, owner, content, or recipient. These marks can then be used to identify the legitimate owner of the intellectual property, and to enforce his or her copyrights.

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive and complement each other. They are overviewed and briefly discussed next . Of course, they both require a legal framework that makes it an offence to circumvent (or try to circumvent) any technology put in place. This is particularly true for digital watermarking technologies. Also, this is where the DMCA comes into play.