Spies, thieves, and lies: the battle for multimedia in the digital era

Multimedia security has become an immediate concern for content providers, artists, and the entertainment industry. The apparent panic over the need for an effective mechanism for digital media rights protection echoes in many of today´s news stories. The fundamental cause for this frenzy is the leakage problem. The leakage problem involves the illegal duplication, unlawful tampering, and wrongful distribution of media. Because of the popularity of handheld digital cameras, online news magazines, and movies on digital versatile disk (DVD), traditional forms of analog media are being replaced with new digital counterparts. Advances in digital media storage, duplication, editing, and transmission technologies have made this alternative more flexible, scalable, and cost effective for emerging applications. Ironically, however, these same appealing conveniences have facilitated large-scale piracy of and unlawful tampering with digital content. Because of analog media´s media, high-quality duplication is expensive and therefore inaccessible to the average consumer. Despite new legislation by governments and the ongoing efforts of the entertainment and high-tech industries, there has been little progress in preventing multimedia theft and tampering