Anonymous fingerprinting of electronic information with automatic identification of redistributers

Fingerprinting is a technique for protecting intellectual ownership of electronic information. Anonymous fingerprinting schemes were recently proposed to allow a seller to fingerprint information sold to a buyer without knowing the identity of the buyer and without the seller seeing the fingerprinted copy. Finding a (redistributed) fingerprinted copy enables the seller to find out and prove to third parties whose copy it was. The authors present the first anonymous fingerprinting scheme in which the help of a registration authority is not required in order to identify a redistributor