Case Studies: Forensic Tracking

Music Distributor

End User
Music distributor

Market Need
Identify source leaks of pre-release music and thwart pre-release piracy. If an album is widely available prior to commercial release, it cuts into album sales and caps consumer demand.

Business Solution
Audio watermarking to embed an identifier unique to each authorized recipient, such as Music Critic, Radio Station, Duplication Service, etc.

Real World Experience
Company individually marks each pre-release (critic's release, radio release) in order to identify source leaks to the Internet. Pre-release watermarking has become an industry practice and fewer leaks now stem from watermarked copies sent to authorized recipients.

System Operator

End User
An IPTV, satellite or cable system operator.

Market Need
System operators are threatened by rebroadcast of content to adjoining markets as well as proliferation of consumer "hacks" for illegal access by individuals. At the same time, content owners are looking to sell high definition and earlier window movies as well as live events. System operators that can demonstrate an ability to monitor the integrity of their DRM and conditional access systems will be in a better position to obtain content that can generate higher revenue streams.

Business Solution
Video forensic watermarking provides a way to track the legitimate distribution of content through the system operators’ infrastructure and all the way to the individual consumer playback devices. When pirated content is discovered, the forensic watermarks are recovered to identify the location of the leak. To be effective the forensic watermarking solution must be simple to implement in a broad range of consumer playback devices, support real-time insertion of a dynamic watermark message, and be renewable even after the consumer playback devices have been deployed.

Real World Experience
Forensic watermarking has proven very effective in professional markets — such as marketing screeners released prior to home video release. Solutions for consumer distribution and playback are now broadly available.