Digital Signets - Self-Enforcing Protection of Digital Content
Cynthia Dwork, Jeff Lotspiech and Moni Naor
Abstract:
The problem of protecting digital content -- software, video,
documents, music, etc., from illegal redistribution by an authorized
user, is the focus of considerable industrial and academic
effort. In the absence of special-purpose tamper-proof
hardware, the problem has no cryptographically secure solution:
once a legitimate user has purchased the content, the user, by
definition, has access to the material and can therefore capture
it and redistribute it. A number of techniques have been suggested
or are currently employed to make redistribution either
inconvenient or traceable. We introduce digital
signets, a technique for protecting digital content from
illegal redistribution. Under the digital signet scheme, a pirate
has essentially two choices: either reveal some sensitive information
(say credit card number) or employ an underground "channel" of similar
bandwidth to the legitimate one, thus making the scheme "self-enforcing".
The work motivates the study of the previously unexamined class
of incompressible functions, analysis of which adds a cryptographic
twist to communication complexity.
Postscript , gzipped
Postscript .
Back to On-Line Publications
Back Home