Next-Gen Watermarks: Reinventing Digital Ownership
How Mentaport is Redefining Content Security
Overview
In today's digital landscape, understanding the content we consume—its origins, its journey, and its use—is increasingly critical. Every minute, thousands of new creations are uploaded to major platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Spotify. With the rapid expansion of AI technology, the volume of online content is growing exponentially. This makes it more important than ever to track and identify the content we engage with, especially to understand how and where it is being utilized across the web.
The challenge of identifying and tracking content has evolved since the advent of online streaming and social media. Over the years, various techniques have been developed to address this issue. However, the sheer volume of content and the proliferation of new platforms have overwhelmed existing solutions, making cross-platform content identification a daunting task.
So, how do we tackle this challenge today, especially when content may be altered or manipulated? In this post, we delve into the mechanisms we've developed to address these issues, with a special focus on the evolution and role of invisible watermarks.
History
Invisible watermarks are a form of Steganography, a term derived from the Greek words 'Steganos' (hidden) and 'Graphein' (writing). This ancient technique involves embedding a message within another medium. One of the earliest recorded uses of steganography was by Histiaeus in 500 BC, who sent a hidden message tattooed on a slave's shaved head. Since then, steganography has evolved significantly, from wax tablets to invisible ink.
In the 1980s, it's rumored that UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used word processor encoding to identify disloyal ministers leaking documents.
By the late 1990s, invisible watermarks began to be embedded in images, audio, and video files to protect private information and copyright data. Despite initial promise, the rise of new platforms and media manipulation tools made it increasingly easy to obliterate these watermarks, prompting the development of alternative techniques.
Similar tech
Techniques like fingerprinting, pattern recognition, and content hashing have gained popularity as alternatives to invisible watermarks. These methods are robust; they survive challenges such as format changes and cross-platform detection. Media fingerprinting, for example, simplifies complex data into a searchable ID number that can be matched against a database to track and identify content. This approach has become widespread, powering applications from music identification like Shazam to broadcast monitoring.
However, as AI evolves and derivative media works proliferate, fingerprinting struggles to scale and accurately identify content.
Watermark vs Fingerprint
While fingerprinting recognizes patterns, it cannot trace the origin of content as an invisible watermark can. Moreover, watermarking requires embedding a marker before distribution, whereas fingerprinting can be applied to content post-release.
This distinction is critical as we move towards greater content volumes and variations. Although fingerprinting can theoretically track every derivative work, identifying new versions remains a challenge. In contrast, watermarking can indicate both the authenticity of content and any alterations made. In our previous post “Watermarking vs. Fingerprinting: Protecting and Tracking Content Online” we delved deep into these topics. We highly recommend checking it out to gain a fuller understanding of the foundation upon which our next-generation solutions are built. It will provide valuable insight into our innovative approach!
Next-Gen Watermarks: Reinventing Digital Ownership
At Mentaport, we understand that as digital media evolves, so must the technologies that protect and verify it. Traditional methods like digital watermarking and fingerprinting have served us well but come with limitations in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
We've developed the most robust invisible watermarking technology to date, addressing the need for a scalable solution that adapts to ongoing content manipulation. Our innovative algorithm combines fingerprinting and watermarking into a novel method for identifying content online.
Innovative Features
Our next-generation watermarking technology incorporates the best of both worlds and introduces advanced features that include:
Hybrid Approach: Combining the resilience of watermarking with the adaptability of fingerprinting to ensure both proactive protection and wide-scale identifiability.
Enhanced Robustness: Utilizing cutting-edge cryptographic techniques to make watermarks virtually indelible and undetectable.
Dynamic Adaptability: Capable of recognizing even subtly altered content, ensuring that derivatives and manipulations do not escape detection.
How It Works: Mentaport’s watermark technology embeds a multi-layered, encrypted marker within the content at various levels, making removal practically impossible. This process is complemented by a dynamic fingerprinting system that continuously updates the content’s identifier based on its usage and alterations, ensuring accurate tracking across platforms.
Proactive Protection for All Your Content
We recognize the importance of not only securing new content but also safeguarding existing materials already circulating online. Our hybrid approach is designed to track both newly distributed and previously uploaded content, ensuring comprehensive protection.
Our Hybrid Model: A Two-Pronged Strategy
Fully Embedded Watermark: This model is designed to be integrated before content distribution, providing robust, foundational security.
Simple Watermark: Tailored for content that has already been deployed, this model uses our advanced algorithms to learn from your existing content, enabling ongoing identification and tracking.
We recommend watermarking all future content to leverage the full potential of our protective suite. This approach not only enhances security but also ensures the most accurate tracking possible.
Multimodal Capabilities for Comprehensive Coverage: Our watermarking technology is versatile, supporting images, audio, and video. Whether your image appears in a video, your video is transformed into a song, or your content is modified in any way, our system ensures you are informed. This multimodal approach guarantees that your content remains identifiable and protected, regardless of how it is transformed or where it appears.
Content Provenance
As a proud member of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), led by Adobe, Mentaport embeds each piece of watermarked content with C2PA-compliant metadata. We adhere to the highest standards and best practices established by the coalition.
Going Beyond Basic Metadata Integration
In addition to embedding C2PA metadata directly into your files, we take a further step by duplicating this information onto a decentralized ledger, specifically the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). This ledger is linked to both the watermark and an immutable certificate attached to the content. This dual-layer integration enhances transparency, allowing metadata to be accessible by everyone, and leverages blockchain technology for its tamper-proof and immutable characteristics.
Ensuring Continuity and Security
Should the metadata ever be altered or lost, Mentaport’s verification systems are designed to regenerate and reattach it to the original file, ensuring your content’s provenance is perpetually safeguarded. This approach not only secures the integrity of your content but also reinforces the trustworthiness of its traceability across platforms.
Benefits for Creators and Distributors
Comprehensive Security: Our technology not only secures copyrights but also provides a full suite of analytics tools that help content creators and distributors monitor how and where their content is being used.
Ease of Integration: Designed to be seamlessly integrated into existing workflows, Mentaport’s watermarks can be added with a simple API call or using our SDK to not alter the creative process or distribution strategies.
Case Studies: Highlight real-world applications and feedback from early adopters who have seen significant improvements in content protection and management.
Conclusion
Focus on Creation, We Handle Protection: With Mentaport's watermarking solutions, you can concentrate on creativity and innovation, knowing that your IP is continuously monitored and protected. Your work is tracked and recognized as yours, wherever it may end up!
The digital content landscape demands constant innovation to keep up with the challenges of content piracy and unauthorized use. Mentaport’s next-generation watermarks represent a significant leap forward, offering creators and distributors a more secure, reliable, and user-friendly method for protecting and managing their digital assets. Stay tuned as we continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in content security.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography#:~:text=The first recorded uses of,before applying its beeswax surface
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/detecting-ai-fingerprints-a-guide-to-watermarking-and-beyond/
https://arxiv.org/html/2408.14155v1
https://c2pa.org/