A wavelet-based watermarking algorithm for ownership verification of digital images

TLDR

The rapid growth of the Internet has made multimedia data easily accessible, but also facilitates unauthorized copying, prompting the need for copyright protection methods such as digital watermarking. This paper discusses the features required for a practical digital watermarking system for ownership verification and proposes a novel wavelet‑based algorithm. The authors argue that perceptual invisibility, robustness, and private control are essential, and they introduce a wavelet‑based watermarking algorithm that satisfies these criteria. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is effective and suitable for practical ownership verification systems.

Abstract

Access to multimedia data has become much easier due to the rapid growth of the Internet. While this is usually considered an improvement of everyday life, it also makes unauthorized copying and distributing of multimedia data much easier, therefore presenting a challenge in the field of copyright protection. Digital watermarking, which is inserting copyright information into the data, has been proposed to solve the problem. In this paper, we first discuss the features that a practical digital watermarking system for ownership verification requires. Besides perceptual invisibility and robustness, we claim that the private control of the watermark is also very important. Second, we present a novel wavelet-based watermarking algorithm. Experimental results and analysis are then given to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is effective and can be used in a practical system.