License distribution protocols from optical media fingerprints

Abstract

According to the Business Software Alliance about 35% of the global software market, worth $141 Billion, is counterfeit. Most of the counterfeit software is distributed in the form of a compact disc (CD) or a digital video disc (DVD) which is easily copied and sold in street corners all around the world but mostly in developing countries. Given the severity of the problem at hand, a comprehensive solution taking into account the manufacturing process, economical implications, ease of enforcement, and the owner’s rights needs to be developed. While this is an enormous undertaking requiring new schemes at all levels of implementation, in this work, we focus only on a small part of the problem, i.e., secure fingerprinting techniques for optical media.