Blind Audio Watermarking Based on Parametric Slant-Hadamard Transform and Hessenberg Decomposition

Digital watermarking has been widely utilized for ownership protection of multimedia contents. This paper introduces a blind symmetric audio watermarking algorithm based on parametric Slant-Hadamard transform (PSHT) and Hessenberg decomposition (HD). In our proposed algorithm, at first watermark image is preprocessed to enhance the security. Then, host signal is divided into non-overlapping frames and the samples of each frame are reshaped into a square matrix. Next, PSHT is performed on each square matrix individually and a part of this transformed matrix of size m×m is selected and HD is applied to it. Euclidean normalization is calculated from the 1st column of the Hessenberg matrix, which is further used for embedding and extracting the watermark. Simulation results ensure the imperceptibility of the proposed method for watermarked audios. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the proposed algorithm is highly robust against numerous attacks. Furthermore, comparative analysis substantiates its superiority among other state-of-the-art methods.

Creativity and ownership: Protection of rights in musical works in the European Union from digitisation to artificial intelligence

Even more than intelligence, creativity is considered as a quintessentially human capacity. The same conclusion is fully applicable to the artistic creation in music sector. However, rapid technological development is constantly challenging not only the creative process as such, but also the legal instruments intended to protect the results of intellectual and artistic work. The first part of this article examines the provisions of the new EU Directive 2019/790 dedicated to online content-sharing service providers and fair remuneration of authors/performers, while its second part maps the main challenges the development of artificial intelligence imposes to the protection of rights in musical works.

Secure Dissemination and Protection of Raster Data using Merkle Hash Tree based Cryptowatermarking

Due to rapid development in the Internet and other communication technologies, it becomes quite easy to copy and distribute multiple illegal copies of high value and sensitive data. Raster data is one of the high voluminous data and it requires huge efforts to sense and generate this data. Therefore, ownership protection as well as its integrity become one of the key problems in spatial information service. There are lot many schemes are available for watermarking and encryption individually, but if both are combined gives manifold advantages. This paper presents a cryptowatermarking scheme by combining watermarking and encryption to protect the copyright of raster data as well as to provide security dissemination level. We have proposed a scheme by employing double transposition, LSB substitution watermarking and Merkle Hash Tree for encryption and watermarking. It has been observed that the proposed scheme is not only robust against encryption attacks, but also has transparency, strongness, large data hiding capacity and correct extraction of watermark.

SVD-Based Image Watermarking Using the Fast Walsh-Hadamard Transform, Key Mapping, and Coefficient Ordering for Ownership Protection

Proof of ownership on multimedia data exposes users to significant threats due to a myriad of transmission channel attacks over distributed computing infrastructures. In order to address this problem, in this paper, an efficient blind symmetric image watermarking method using singular value decomposition (SVD) and the fast Walsh-Hadamard transform (FWHT) is proposed for ownership protection. Initially, Gaussian mapping is used to scramble the watermark image and secure the system against unauthorized detection. Then, FWHT with coefficient ordering is applied to the cover image. To make the embedding process robust and secure against severe attacks, two unique keys are generated from the singular values of the FWHT blocks of the cover image, which are kept by the owner only. Finally, the generated keys are used to extract the watermark and verify the ownership. The simulation result demonstrates that our proposed scheme is highly robust against numerous attacks. Furthermore, comparative analysis corroborates its superiority among other state-of-the-art methods. The NC of the proposed method is numerically one, and the PSNR resides from 49.78 to 52.64. In contrast, the NC of the state-of-the-art methods varies from 0.7991 to 0.9999, while the PSNR exists in the range between 39.4428 and 54.2599.

THE CONSERVATOR’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE DETERIORATION OF MONUMENTS

Over the last decades, built heritage and the conditions of its protection have changed a lot. There has been a significant increase in the number and diversity of monuments. The expectations of contemporary societies regarding the use of heritage have changed as well. As a consequence, the ownership, protection, financing and use of heritage has been privatized. These conditions should be reflected in conservation theory. Conservation theory should be realistic - it should indicate how to protect and use heritage in practice. Therefore, it is necessary to scientifically develop a modern conservation theory. The application of conservation theory which does not take into account contemporary conditions contributes to chaos in the protection of monuments and facilitates the destruction of their values. Therefore, the development of contemporary conservation theory can also be considered an ethical problem.