computers Review Survey on Decentralized Fingerprinting Solutions: Copyright Protection through Piracy Tracing David Megías 1,* , Minoru Kuribayashi 2 and Amna Qureshi 1 1 Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), CYBERCAT-Center for Cybersecurity Research of Catalonia, Castelldefels (Barcelona), 08860 Catalonia, Spain;
[email protected] 2 Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, Okayama 700-8530, Japan;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Received: 13 March 2020; Accepted: 30 March 2020; Published: 3 April 2020 Abstract: Copyright protection is one of the most relevant challenges in the network society. This paper focuses on digital fingerprinting, a technology that facilitates the tracing of the source of an illegal redistribution, making it possible for the copyright holder to take legal action in case of copyright violation. The paper reviews recent digital fingerprinting solutions that are available for two particularly relevant scenarios: peer-to-peer distribution networks and broadcasting. After analyzing those solutions, a discussion is carried out to highlight the properties and the limitations of those techniques. Finally, some directions for further research on this topic are suggested. Keywords: copyright infringement; piracy tracing; fingerprinting; peer-to-peer distribution; broadcasting 1. Introduction Nowadays, digital technologies allow users to generate near-perfect quality identical copies of the content at low costs. Therefore, the amount of the digital data that is illegally redistributed is growing, making businesses lose income. Content creators and multimedia producers are concerned about the consequences of illegal copying and redistribution on a massive scale. Consequently, the need for a protection system that can provide copyright protection by prosecuting unauthorized copying has arisen in recent years.