Content protection and usage control for digital music

Abstract

The paper presents two fast and robust digital watermarking schemes for compressed music format and MIDI format, which are suitable for online distribution through Internet. For compressed music, the watermark is embedded in partially uncompressed domain and the embedding scheme is high related to music content. For MIDI, the watermark is embedded in virtual notes that are generated and randomly hide among the MIDI notes. The paper also presents a method for controlling usage and protecting against copying of digital music contents and their associated players. The digital music contents and their players installed in one computer cannot be used if they are copied to another computer. Even in the same computer, the duplicated digital music contents are not usable. The usage associated to each music content will restrict the running time and times the music can be played and it will be automatically updated after each playing of the music. The digital music may not be accessible if its permitted usage has expired.