Collusion-secure fingerprinting for digital data

This paper discusses methods for assigning code-words for the purpose of fingerprinting digital data, e.g., software, documents, music, and video. Fingerprinting consists of uniquely marking and registering each copy of the data. This marking allows a distributor to detect any unauthorized copy and trace it back to the user. This threat of detection will deter users from releasing unauthorized copies. A problem arises when users collude: for digital data, two different fingerprinted objects can be compared and the differences between them detected. Hence, a set of users can collude to detect the location of the fingerprint. They can then alter the fingerprint to mask their identities. We present a general fingerprinting solution which is secure in the context of collusion. In addition, we discuss methods for distributing fingerprinted data.