Classifications

• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
  • H04N1/00—Scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, e.g. facsimile transmission; Details thereof
  • H04N1/32—Circuits or arrangements for control or supervision between transmitter and receiver or between image input and image output device, e.g. between a still-image camera and its memory or between a still-image camera and a printer device
  • H04N1/32101—Display, printing, storage or transmission of additional information, e.g. ID code, date and time or title
  • H04N1/32144—Display, printing, storage or transmission of additional information, e.g. ID code, date and time or title embedded in the image data, i.e. enclosed or integrated in the image, e.g. watermark, super-imposed logo or stamp
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
  • G06T—IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL
  • G06T1/00—General purpose image data processing
  • G06T1/0021—Image watermarking
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
  • H04N1/00—Scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, e.g. facsimile transmission; Details thereof
  • H04N1/32—Circuits or arrangements for control or supervision between transmitter and receiver or between image input and image output device, e.g. between a still-image camera and its memory or between a still-image camera and a printer device
  • H04N1/32101—Display, printing, storage or transmission of additional information, e.g. ID code, date and time or title
  • H04N1/32144—Display, printing, storage or transmission of additional information, e.g. ID code, date and time or title embedded in the image data, i.e. enclosed or integrated in the image, e.g. watermark, super-imposed logo or stamp
  • H04N1/32149—Methods relating to embedding, encoding, decoding, detection or retrieval operations
  • H04N1/32203—Spatial or amplitude domain methods
  • H04N1/32208—Spatial or amplitude domain methods involving changing the magnitude of selected pixels, e.g. overlay of information or super-imposition
  • H04N1/32213—Modulating the least significant bits of pixels
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
  • H04N1/00—Scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, e.g. facsimile transmission; Details thereof
  • H04N1/32—Circuits or arrangements for control or supervision between transmitter and receiver or between image input and image output device, e.g. between a still-image camera and its memory or between a still-image camera and a printer device
  • H04N1/32101—Display, printing, storage or transmission of additional information, e.g. ID code, date and time or title
  • H04N1/32144—Display, printing, storage or transmission of additional information, e.g. ID code, date and time or title embedded in the image data, i.e. enclosed or integrated in the image, e.g. watermark, super-imposed logo or stamp
  • H04N1/32149—Methods relating to embedding, encoding, decoding, detection or retrieval operations
  • H04N1/32267—Methods relating to embedding, encoding, decoding, detection or retrieval operations combined with processing of the image
  • H04N1/32272—Encryption or ciphering
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
  • H04N1/00—Scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, e.g. facsimile transmission; Details thereof
  • H04N1/44—Secrecy systems
  • H04N1/448—Rendering the image unintelligible, e.g. scrambling
  • H04N1/4486—Rendering the image unintelligible, e.g. scrambling using digital data encryption
• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H04—ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE
  • H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
  • H04N2201/00—Indexing scheme relating to scanning, transmission or reproduction of documents or the like, and to details thereof
  • H04N2201/32—Circuits or arrangements for control or supervision between transmitter and receiver or between image input and image output device, e.g. between a still-image camera and its memory or between a still-image camera and a printer device
  • H04N2201/3201—Display, printing, storage or transmission of additional information, e.g. ID code, date and time or title
  • H04N2201/3225—Display, printing, storage or transmission of additional information, e.g. ID code, date and time or title of data relating to an image, a page or a document
  • H04N2201/3246—Display, printing, storage or transmission of additional information, e.g. ID code, date and time or title of data relating to an image, a page or a document of data relating to permitted access or usage, e.g. level of access or usage parameters for digital rights management [DRM] related to still images

Definitions

• the present invention relates to a method of transmitting information with access control in
• transmission is meant both transmission and reception.
• the invention covers a transmission method, a reception method, a transmission device, a reception device and a
• the invention finds an application in the transmission of fixed or animated images, images of natural or synthetic objects, sounds, music, etc.
• the access control technique is widely used today, especially in the field of television. According to this technique, the information to be transmitted (luminance, chrominance of the points of a
• 25 image are first transformed into digital data, these data are scrambled by various algorithms and then are transmitted in scrambled form.
• the recipient is provided with a security processor in which various access authorizations appear.
• the access control information relating to a particular service is always transmitted separately from the data, which requires a specific protocol depending on the type of transmission medium.
• DVB Digital Video Broadcasting
• DAB Digital Audio Broadcasting
• An object of the present invention is to remedy this drawback by eliminating any protocol for transmitting access control information. Another aim is to avoid piracy or illicit copying of the information transmitted.
• the invention recommends inserting the access control information into the digital data to be transmitted and this in a particular form, which is that of the digital watermark, also called “Watermarking" in English.
• the digital watermark is known to mark a work in order to protect it by copyright ("Copyright").
• the invention therefore relates to a method of transmitting information with access control, in which we transform this information into digital data, we scramble this digital data, we send scrambled digital data and further transmitting access control information, characterized in that the access control information is inserted into the scrambled digital data as a digital watermark and the scrambled digital data is transmitted with their digital watermark.
• the access control information of the digital watermark is inserted in certain bytes, in place of certain binary element (s), for example the least significant binary element.
• the choice of these bytes is determined by a key.
• the emission data and the watermark can be by any means: terrestrial, wireline, digital cable, 'by recording medium (eg digital optical disc says CD), etc ...
• this information corresponds to images.
• the scrambling carried out is such that the original quality of the image is degraded, the descrambling giving back its original quality to the image.
• This degradation can be effected by degree according to a scrambling index.
• the invention also relates to a method for receiving information with access control, this information having been transmitted according to the method which has just been defined, this method being characterized in that extracting the digital watermark from the digital data received, which gives the access control information and, if access is authorized, the scrambled digital data is scrambled to restore the information.
• transmission can be carried out over the Internet by an image server and reception by a user provided with appropriate equipment.
• the user orders an image from the image server,
• the image server inserts a digital watermark into the digital image data, degrades the image quality by scrambling the digital data of the image according to a chosen scrambling index and transmits the degraded quality image with the digital watermark,
• the present invention also relates to a device for the transmission of information with access control for the implementation of the method which has just been described.
• This device comprises means for transforming this information into digital data, means for scrambling this data, means for transmitting this scrambled data and for transmitting access control information.
• This device is characterized in that it comprises means for inserting the access control information into the digital data in the form of a digital watermark, the transmission means being capable of transmitting the scrambled data with the control information. access.
• this device comprises means for inserting a digital watermark in the data relating to an image, means for degrading the quality of the image by scrambling the digital data of the image according to a chosen scrambling index, and means for transmitting the degraded quality image with the digital watermark.
• the present invention also relates to a device for receiving information with access control for the implementation of the method already defined.
• This device comprises means for receiving scrambled data and access control information, means for checking whether access is authorized, and means for descrambling the data received if access is authorized and means for restoring the information.
• the device of the invention is characterized in that the reception means are capable of extracting from the data received the digital watermark that they contain to find the access control information and descramble the data if access is authorized.
• the means for descrambling the data are means capable of restoring an image of degraded quality to its original quality.
• the present invention relates to a system comprising at least one transmission device and a plurality of reception devices as they have just been defined.
• FIG. 1 is a general flow diagram illustrating the method of the invention
• FIG. 2 illustrates a secure image distribution service on the Internet. Detailed description of a particular mode of implementation
• the method can implement two distinct units:
• An image server comprising a means for scrambling the image and inserting the digital watermark containing the access control information and various limitations
• Various access control parameters can be inserted into the image as a digital watermark, in particular:
• an image descrambled by the user's equipment can be easily recovered by a copy or a screenshot; these copy and screen capture functions can be disabled in the equipment for all applications running on the computer;
• the use can be reserved for a single user by inserting his user reference (WM-REF-USAGER) or the reference to a service (WM-REF-SERVICE).
• the original image is a BMP bitmap image in spatial coding in which each pixel is represented by its three RGB (Red-Green-Blue) components.
• the BMP file has the following structure:
• a header in which the characteristics of the image are defined (size, pointer to the bitmap, number of coding bits, number of planes, color palette, etc.);
• the first information to insert is the watermark identifier (WM-ID on six bytes) and the length of the data that follows (in bytes). This length (coded on 8 bits), which must be systematically found, is marked in the start address zone: address of the start of the bitmap and width 30Oh (the letter h means that the addresses are expressed in a hexadecimal system) .
• This zone is composed of: • WM-DESCR (1 byte): descriptor of the access conditions, with the following bits:
• WM-MASK (1 byte): encryption mask (index marking the degree of image degradation). It tells the equipment which bits are scrambled in the bitmap:
• WM-NBMAX-UTIL (2 bytes): maximum number of uses (number of bits: 16)
• WM-REF-IMAGE (2 bytes): image reference (number of bits: 16)
• WM-REF-IMAGE (2 bytes): image reference (number of bits: 16)
• WM-REF-SERVICE (8 bytes): service reference
• scrambling is obtained by an encryption sequence initialized by a key.
• Six cases can be considered: - no access control criteria: the key is taken equal to 0,
• the key is taken equal to the reference of the image
• - exclusivity for a user the key is taken equal to the reference of the user
• the key is a function of the service reference
• the scrambling algorithm operates on all bytes by performing an EXCLUSIVE OR (XOR) logical operation between certain bits of the current byte and the corresponding bits of the encrypting byte of the ciphering sequence.
• This algorithm operates only on the 7 bits not used for the watermark, for example the 7 most significant bits and never encrypts the least significant bit b 0 , if it is the one which can contain a bit of the digital watermark .
• the access control information may contain the encrypted descrambling key.
• the user's equipment extracts the possible WM-ID-LU identifier from the watermark and checks it. If this WM-ID-LU identifier does not correspond to the WM-ID of the algorithm, the image does not have access control information and is considered to be in free access. If WM-ID is found, then the equipment extracts the complete watermark and operates chronologically as follows:
• FIGS. 1 and 2 These different operations are illustrated diagrammatically in FIGS. 1 and 2.
• the block 10 designates a rights server, which performs the loading and management of the rights of the different users, symbolized by the card 12.
• This loading can be carried out in any way whatsoever : by wire, over the air, etc.
• a card 20 is an external motherboard or a means of managing rights residing in the application of the digital watermark.
• This card controls a block 22 relating to access control.
• the digital data organized in block 30 are degraded in block 32.
• the access control data (block 34) is then inserted therein and the assembly is broadcast as symbolically indicated by arrow 35.
• the presence of data in the watermark (36) is detected and if this presence is detected, the data in question (38) is extracted. Otherwise, we decide (44) to use the raw data.
• the extracted data are checked in block 46, which also receives the rights entered in the card 12. These rights are then subject to a check of the access conditions (48). If the access conditions are checked, the data is descrambled (40) and this descrambled data is used to display the image (42). If the access conditions are not checked, we return to the use of raw data.
• Figure 2 for its part, more specifically illustrates the principle of a secure image distribution service on the Internet. On the user side, symbolized by block 50, the first operation is an order (52) of an image.

Landscapes

• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Multimedia (AREA)
• Signal Processing (AREA)
• Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
• Editing Of Facsimile Originals (AREA)
• Two-Way Televisions, Distribution Of Moving Picture Or The Like (AREA)
• Image Processing (AREA)

Applications Claiming Priority (3)

Publications (1)

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Family Applications (1)

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Family Cites Families (8)

• 2000
  • 2000-03-08 FR FR0002960A patent/FR2806231B1/fr not_active Expired - Fee Related
• 2001
  • 2001-03-06 US US10/204,979 patent/US20030026421A1/en not_active Abandoned
  • 2001-03-06 AU AU2001242541A patent/AU2001242541A1/en not_active Abandoned
  • 2001-03-06 JP JP2001565641A patent/JP2003526288A/ja not_active Withdrawn
  • 2001-03-06 EP EP01915446A patent/EP1269741A1/de not_active Withdrawn
  • 2001-03-06 WO PCT/FR2001/000657 patent/WO2001067741A1/fr active Application Filing

Non-Patent Citations (1)

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