SBIR Phase II: Novel photographic steganography to reduce digital piracy on live streaming platforms

小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目的更广泛影响将是减少社交媒体公司的视频和图像版权相关责任，并为数字媒体许可公司和其他持有或执行内容权利的内容所有者/分销商保留利润。除了内容保护之外，正在开发的技术还可以满足对数字内容认证的新需求，这种认证可以确保用户正在观看的数字图像或视频是合法的，并且不会通过使用“深度伪造”或其他类似技术而被改变。据估计，全球数字视频盗版给媒体提供商、内容创作者和法律的分销商造成了670亿至790亿美元的收入损失。虽然公司每年为体育转播权支付数十亿美元，但非法体育流媒体网站几乎不需要任何成本就可以产生巨大的广告收入。随着互联网的出现，以及大量高质量的小型便携式录制设备的出现，视频盗版者捕获和分享受版权保护的材料变得更加容易。使用照片隐写术来标记带有不可检测信息的版权内容，将为利益相关者提供内置的反盗版保护。反过来，这项技术将有助于确保法律的内容分发、对生产者的内容保护和对消费者的内容保证。这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目旨在通过使用摄影隐写术对数字图像和数字视频进行不可感知的水印处理，开发一种有竞争力的版权保护解决方案。该项目与以前的工作不同之处在于：（1）模拟人类视觉系统，使像素调制是机器可读的，但人类无法感知;（2）鲁棒地处理视频压缩算法，如H.264，HEVC，MPEG和VP 9;（3）采用单帧，无同步方法，兼容静止图像和视频;（4）使用智能手机摄像头实现自由空间光通信（光场消息传递）;（5）与普通摄像头和显示硬件一起工作，没有特殊的频谱或速度要求;（6）采用最先进的深度学习算法，使用数十万张图像进行训练。拟议的产品将能够可靠地检测屏幕到摄像头盗版，同时保持广播视频质量标准。在该项目期间，该技术将在四个关键技术开发领域得到加强：㈠对关键图像/视频突变的鲁棒性; ㈡实时编码; ㈢计算效率高的解码;及（iv）工业─视觉质量的标准认证。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will be to reduce video and image copyright-related liability for social media companies and retain profits for digital media licensing companies and other content owners/distributors who are holding or enforcing content rights. Beyond content protection, the technology being developed can also address the emerging need for digital content authentication that can assure users the digital images or videos they are viewing are legitimate and not altered through the use of “deep-fake” or other similar technologies. Global piracy of digital video has been estimated to cost media providers, content creators, and legal distributors $67-$79 billion in lost revenue. While companies pay billions of dollars per year for sports broadcast rights, illegal sports streaming sites can generate enormous ad revenues at virtually no cost. With the advent of the internet and the abundance of high-quality recording equipment on small, portable devices, it has become easier for video pirates to capture and share copyrighted material. Using photographic steganography to mark copyrighted content with undetectable messages will provide stakeholders with built-in anti-piracy protections. This technology, in turn, will help ensure legal content distribution, content protection for producers, and content assurance for consumers. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project seeks to develop a competitive solution to copyright protection through imperceptible watermarking of digital images and digital videos using photographic steganography. This project is distinct from prior work in that it: (1) models the human vision system so that pixel modulations are machine-readable but imperceptible to humans; (2) robustly handles video compression algorithms like H.264, HEVC, MPEG, and VP9; (3) employs single-frame, synchronization-free methodology compatible with both still images and videos; (4) enables free-space light communication (light field messaging) using smartphone cameras; (5) works with ordinary camera and display hardware with no special spectrum or speed requirements; and (6) employs state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms trained with hundreds of thousands of images. The proposed product will be able to reliably detect screen-to-camera piracy while maintaining broadcast video quality standards. During this project, the technology will be strengthened in four key technical areas of development: (i) robustness to critical image/video mutations; (ii) real-time encoding; (iii) computationally efficient decoding; and (iv) industry-standard certification for visual quality.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.