Collusion-resilient fingerprinting using random prewarping

Fingerprinting of audio-visual content using digital watermarks is an effective means of determining the originators of unauthorized copies and fighting piracy in digital distribution networks. In particular, watermarks embedded within the content help trace the traitor responsible for the piracy. A group of users may, however, collude and collectively escape identification by creating an average of their individually watermarked copies that appears unwatermarked. We propose a novel collusion-resilience mechanism, wherein the host signal is warped randomly prior to watermarking. As each copy undergoes a distinctive warp, collusion through averaging either yields low-quality results or requires substantial computational resources to undo random warps. The proposed method is independent of the watermarking scheme used and does not impose any restrictions on the watermark signal that are required by some collusion resistant watermarking schemes. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach on digital images.