Hitachi, Ltd.

Other

Isao Echizen

Hiroshi Yoshiura

Kousuke Anzai

Takao Arai

Yutaka Kurosu

Toshifumi Takeuchi

Hiroyuki Kimura

Shinobu Eikawa

Kazunori Nakano

Akira Maeda

Ryoichi Sasaki

Kunihiko Miyazaki

Yasuhiro Fujii

Shinichiro Harano

Yoshiaki Moriyama

Akira Ogino

Masafumi Nakamura

Shigeki Hirasawa

Akio Fukushima

Kazumi Sugaya

Masataka Okayama

Jun'ichi Taguchi

Katsuyuki Okeya

Shinji Itoh

Junichi Taguchi

Takaaki Yamada

Hiromi Ukai

Shuichi Tago

Jun&prime;ichi Taguchi

Ju&nacute;ichi Taguchi

At least one kind of control signal concerning control of contents, added to specific locations inside contents data, is detected as first control information, and at the same time, at least one kind of control information concerning control of contents, embedded inside the contents data by a digital watermark, is detected as second control information. Consistency between the first control information as detected, and the second control information as detected is determined and on the basis of results of the determination, the control of the contents is executed. Thus, it is possible to reduce a possibility of the contents being improperly copied, thereby enabling the control with assurance of still higher safety.

System and method for controlling contents by plurality of pieces of control information

A technology of digital watermarking for binary images (including documents) is provided, which is capable of adjusting the amount of information to be embedded while avoiding the deterioration of image quality as far as possible. The watermark information is inserted by giving the standard for judgment of modification and the order of preference for modification according to the characteristic properties of the human visual sense for binary images and performing modification on pixels sequentially in the descending order of preference.

Method of watermarking for binary images

A contents control method for controlling a process on the receiving side which is applied to contents transmitted from the transmitting side to the receiving side, includes a step of adding, when a predetermined block of the transmitted contents is an area where control information for controlling the process substance on the receiving side which is applied to the contents is added, the control information to the block. The method also includes a step of receiving a process designation concerning the transmitted contents, and a step of applying, when user information stored in a receiving side apparatus which receives the transmitted contents, or information concerning the receiving side apparatus satisfies conditions corresponding to the received process designation in the control information added to the block of the contents, a process corresponding to the process designation to the received block.

Method and system for contents control

The present invention can detect watermark information from motion picture of various scanning methods and various picture sizes without causing increase of a memory capacity. A watermark information detection apparatusconverts encoded watermarked motion pictureinto standard motion picturehaving the smallest data size among the assumed kinds of motion picture. Further, the watermark information detection apparatusscales a standard coordination system that is utilized for specifying embedding locations of a watermark pattern. Then, with respect to each field of the standard motion picture, watermark information is detected from predetermined locations specified in the scaled standard coordinate system by the watermark pattern.

Method of detecting digital watermark information

A method for using digital contents is provided. In the method, a request is made to a provider apparatus for a certificate containing a first provider ID embedded therein by a certification authority, and the certificate is received from the provider apparatus. A decision is made by using the certificate as to whether or not the provider is authorized by the certification authority. A request is made to the provider apparatus for a digital content having a second provider ID embedded therein by a contents guarantee authority when the provider is authorized by the certification authority, and the digital content is received from the provider. The first provider ID is read from the certificate, the digital content is correlated with the second provider ID, and the digital content is stored in a storage medium. The second provider ID is detected from the digital content in response to a request to use the digital content. The first provider ID is compared with the second provider ID when the second provider ID is detected. The digital content is used when the first provider ID and the second provider ID match. The use of the digital content is restricted when the first provider ID and the second provider ID do no match.

Method and apparatus for using contents

A digital watermark information detection method for detecting information inserted as a digital watermark from contents has a step of converting the contents into a predetermined specified format and a step of trying to detect information from the converted contents. When a plurality of specified formats are defined in advance and detection of the information from the converted contents fails, the contents is converted into another specified format and the information detection is retried.

Watermark information detection method

A method of embedding digital watermark information b&#x2013;b(2&#x2266;n) in image data. The image data is divided into a plurality of areas S each consisting of M&#xd7;N (1&#x2266;M, N) pixels. A plurality of areas G each consisting of P&#xd7;Q (1&#x2266;P, Q) of the areas S are defined. Each of the areas S constituting each area G is allocated to some one of: areas T&#x2013;Tin which said digital watermark information b&#x2013;bis respectively embedded and areas H&#x2013;H(1&#x2266;m) in which information is not embedded. One or more areas T and one or more areas H are located in a predetermined arrangement in each area G. And, the plurality of areas G are located in a predetermined rule.

Method for embedding information and extracting the same

To lighten the processing load of embedding a digital watermark in content data, a preliminary process (embedding strength map generating process) run by a preprocessing section and the main process (digital watermark embedding process) run by a man processing section are run mutually independently. Specifically, the preliminary process of the preprocessing section is run each time new content data is stored to the content data database, and the main process of the main processing section is run when a content delivery request is received from a receiving terminal (client).

Digital watermark data embedding method, and digital watermark data embeddability analyzing method

A network system capable of preventing the leakage of a confidential file by an inadvertent act of a transmitting party and capable of meeting the requirement for an arbitrary file format is disclosed. A label indicating a security level ('confidential' or 'unclassified') is attached to the file in a client terminal, which transmits the labeled file outside. A transmission management program on a gateway server checks the label of the file, and in the case where the security level is &#x201c;unclassified&#x201d;, transmits the file to an external network. Also, a label management program manages the labeled file in the client terminal.

Network system enabling transmission control

A digital watermark information is extracted from geometrically deformed image without using a calibrating digital watermark. Pixel data at positions predetermined in an X-Y coordinate used when embedding the watermark is extracted from image data in which the digital watermark has been embedded for given pixel data and compared with a reference value to determine whether the watermark has been embedded in the pixel data concerned or not. This processing is repeated until it is confirmed that the information is embedded in the pixel data concerned, while applying geometric deformation to the image data.

Method of extracting digital watermark information and method of judging bit value of digital watermark information

To enable the control of rendering contents in part by using digital watermark technique: a contents serving center for embedding watermark in contentsembeds control information as digital watermarks within at least one of a plurality of blocks constituting electronic data by which contents are represented, thereby specifying the application of filtering to a part of the contents corresponding to the block; a contents distribution centerdistributes the watermark-including contents to a receiving terminalwhere checks the blocks of the received data to detect whether the control information as digital watermarks is embedded therein and applies the filtering to the block for which the embedded control information embedded has been detected in advance of reproducing the contents.

Contents rendering control method, contents reproducing equipment, and contents distribution equipment

A method of embedding information into contents includes a changeable range calculating step of obtaining a range where value change of the contents is imperceptible to the human being and a step of embedding information by changing the values of the contents within the changeable range.

Method and system for embedding information into contents

A data embedding method and apparatus and a data reproducing method and apparatus are provided which can apply a digital watermark to various contents. Instead of embedding watermarking information in respective pixels or by using a relation between pixels, the watermarking information is embedded as a position pattern of changed pixels in the contents. Reliability comparable with conventional techniques can be obtained irrespective of a change in a smaller number of pixels for the contents.

Water-mark embedding method and system

A watermark information embedding method, and apparatus, capable of suppressing the quality degradation of contents and increasing the survivability of embedded information. When embedding watermark information in moving picture data formed of a plurality of still picture frames arranged in time series, a motion vector representing a property specific to moving picture is detected for each of image blocks generated by dividing a target frame. According to a motion quantity, a pixel change factor specifying rule is selected for each block. Out of pixels permitted to be changed in luminance depending upon the state of an image in each block representing a property specific to still picture, as many pixels as a number specified by the selected rule are selected. Luminance change processing for forming watermark information is conducted on the selected pixels.

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Yokohama, Japan

Isao Echizen