Unsupervised, Fast and Efficient Color Image Copy Protection

The ubiquity of broadband digital communications and mass storage in modern society has stimulated the widespread acceptance of digital media. However, easy access to royalty-free digital media has also resulted in a reduced perception in society of the intellectual value of digital media and has promoted unauthorized duplication practices. To detect and discourage the unauthorized duplication of media, researchers have investigated watermarking methods to embed ownership data into media. However, some authorities have expressed doubt over the efficacy of watermarking methods to protect digital media. This paper introduces a novel method to discourage unauthorized duplication of digital images by introducing reversible, deliberate distortions to the original image. The resultant image preserves the image size and essential content with distortions in edge and color appearance. The proposed method also provides an efficient reconstruction process using a compact key to reconstruct the original image Preprint submitted to IEE Proceedings on Communications 2 August 2005 from the distorted image. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method can achieve effective robustness towards attacks, while its computational cost and quality of results are completely practical.