Multimedia Security in Communication (MUSIC) J.UCS Special Issue

With the rapid development of communication techniques, it becomes more and more practical to talk with anyone anywhere. As an important aspect, multimedia (image, video, audio, etc.) enriches humans’ daily life. Nowadays, multimedia communication is in close relation with the activities in entertainment, politics, economics, militaries, industries, etc., which makes it urgent for protecting multimedia security, e.g., confidentiality, integrity, ownership or identity. Generally, multimedia security is different from text/binary data security since multimedia content is often of large volumes, with interactive operations, and requires real-time responses. Additionally, multimedia security is in close relation with the services. Different services require different methods for content transmission or distribution, paying, interaction, etc. Now, various new services arise, such as mobile TV, IPTV, IMS, VoIP, p2p living or download, convergence of mobile and Internet, etc. In mobile TV, the terminal s power should be considered when designing the multimedia protection methods that may be different from traditional means. In p2p living, the distributed architecture requires the protection means different from the server-client mode. Additionally, under the environment of network convergence, the smart means adaptive to different networks are expected.