Implementing Watermark Token in WS-Security for Digital Content Distribution
Shing-Chi Cheung, Hanif Curreem, Dickson K.W. Chiu, Patrick C. K. Hung · Rare & Special e-Zone (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) · 2003
Digital watermarking is a promising technique employed by various Digital Rights Management Systems (DRMSs) to achieve copyrights management. Research efforts have been made to search for watermarking protocols to distribute and resolve disputes of watermarked contents. In this paper, we assume a business model, which distinguishes the roles of buyers, content distributors, and content providers. A watermarking protocol is proposed to address a common problem in Internet trading where these parties may not have mutual trusts. In particular, watermark certificates digitally signed by watermark certificate authorities (WCA) that contain encrypted watermarks can be sent and processed securely over the Internet for the purchase of digital contents. The infrastructure can easily be adapted to support a business model of reselling digital contents, which may involve multiple tiers of content distributors in an Internet trading. As a step to realize the protocol, we present an infrastructure that deploys the protocol over Web Services. In addition, we also propose a watermark token in the context of WS-Security for implementing this model.