Buyer seller watermarking protocols issues and challenges – A survey

Advancements in computing and networking technologies have opened gateways for the content owners to produce and distribute their digital contents (e.g., audio/video/images) in a convenient and affordable manner. Despite all the advantages promised by the advancement in digital technology and widespread use of Internet, piracy of content is still big concern. Digital content can be easily copied without any quality loss. Content creators and owners are concerned about the consequences of illegal copying and distribution on a massive scale like loss of capital. As digital data can be duplicated and edited with great ease, this has led to Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems that can address the issues related to privacy and security of the digital contents. Digital watermarking is a promising technology employed by various DRM systems to achieve rights management. Buyer-Seller Watermarking (BSW) protocol integrates encryption, with digital watermarking and other techniques to ensure rights protection & security for seller as well as the buyer of the digital content. BSW protocols support copyright protection, piracy tracing, and privacy protection. Various approaches have been proposed for BSW protocols. In this context, the main contributions of this paper to the literature on BSW protocols are threefold: (i) it identifies the challenges in designing a BSW protocol; (ii) provides the taxonomy of existing approaches; and (iii) describes the strengths and weaknesses of the presented approaches by comparison and some open issues are highlighted.