Multi-modal fingerprinting for multimedia assets: optimisation of media security protection in online distribution environments

Since the advent of the internet in every day life in the 1990s, the barriers to producing, distributing and consuming multimedia data such as videos, music, ebooks, etc. have steadily been lowered for most computer users so that almost everyone with internet access can join the online communities who both produce, consume and of course also share media artefacts. Along with this trend, the violation of personal data privacy and copyright has increased with illegal file sharing being rampant across many online communities particularly for certain music genres and amongst the younger age groups. This has had a devastating effect on the traditional media distribution market; in most cases leaving the distribution companies and the content owner with huge financial losses. To prove that a copyright violation has occurred one can deploy fingerprinting mechanisms to uniquely identify the property. However this is currently based on only uni-modal approaches. In this paper we describe some of the design challenges and architectural approaches to multi-modal fingerprinting currently being examined for evaluation studies within a PhD research programme on optimisation of multi-modal fingerprinting architectures. Accordingly we outline the available modalities that are being integrated through this research programme which aims to establish the optimal architecture for multi-modal media security protection over the internet as the online distribution environment for both legal and illegal distribution of media products.

Active networks: an evolution of the internet

Active Networks can be seen as an evolution of the classical model of packet-switched networks. The traditional and ”passive” network model is based on a static definition of the network node behaviour. Active Networks propose an “active” model where the intermediate nodes (switches and routers) can load and execute user code contained in the data units (packets). Active Networks are a programmable network model, where bandwidth and computation are both considered shared network resources. This approach opens up new interesting research fields. This paper gives a short introduction of Active Networks, discusses the advantages they introduce and presents the research advances in this field.

This is me: digital identity and reputation on the Internet

The chapter reports on the ‘This Is Me’ project, that aimed to help students and the wider public to be aware of the impact that online material, particularly that on the Internet, has on their identity and reputation. The chapter explores practical aspects of Digital Identity, relating to issues such as employability, relationships and even death. For example, understanding the impact a photograph posted on a social networking website might have for different groups of people, ranging from friends or parents to future employers. As part of the ‘This is Me’ project stories were collected from students and others about Digital Identity matters, a grounded methodological approach based on action research was used to establish issues related to Digital Identity particularly relevant to those in academia. Drawing from these issues, resources were developed to help inform and educate people about how they can understand and control their own Digital Identity. A number of these resources are presented here, along with reflections on how they are used and can be adapted.

Dynamic virtual environments using really simple syndication

This paper investigates the use of really simple syndication (RSS) to dynamically change virtual environments. The case study presented here uses meteorological data downloaded from the Internet in the form of an RSS feed, this data is used to simulate current weather patterns in a virtual environment. The downloaded data is aggregated and interpreted in conjunction with a configuration file, used to associate relevant weather information to the rendering engine. The engine is able to animate a wide range of basic weather patterns. Virtual reality is a way of immersing a user into a different environment, the amount of immersion the user experiences is important. Collaborative virtual reality will benefit from this work by gaining a simple way to incorporate up-to-date RSS feed data into any environment scenario. Instead of simulating weather conditions in training scenarios, actual weather conditions can be incorporated, improving the scenario and immersion.

Model-based groupware solution for distributed real-time collaborative 4D planning via teamwork

Construction planning plays a fundamental role in construction project management that requires team working among planners from a diverse range of disciplines and in geographically dispersed working situations. Model-based four-dimensional (4D) computer-aided design (CAD) groupware, though considered a possible approach to supporting collaborative planning, is still short of effective collaborative mechanisms for teamwork due to methodological, technological and social challenges. Targeting this problem, this paper proposes a model-based groupware solution to enable a group of multidisciplinary planners to perform real-time collaborative 4D planning across the Internet. In the light of the interactive definition method, and its computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) design analysis, the paper discusses the realization of interactive collaborative mechanisms from software architecture, application mode, and data exchange protocol. These mechanisms have been integrated into a groupware solution, which was validated by a planning team in a truly geographically dispersed condition. Analysis of the validation results revealed that the proposed solution is feasible for real-time collaborative 4D planning to gain a robust construction plan through collaborative teamwork. The realization of this solution triggers further considerations about its enhancement for wider groupware applications.

Taking the brand promise online: challenges and opportunities

Starting from the fact that a 'brand' is a universal concept regardless of environment, but its enactment changes according to environment, this paper provides pointers about brand building on the internet. It presents a three-level model of a brand to help organisations characterise their brands' promises. By expanding this model it then considers how a brand's promise can be enacted on the internet in order to assess the coherence of the brand. Through considering how some organisations have taken advantage of the internet, it highlights three factors critical for success. Ten key action points for marketers are presented.

File Transfer Protocol

The discourse surrounding the virtual has moved away from the utopian thinking accompanying the rise of the Internet in the 1990s. The Cyber-gurus of the last decades promised a technotopia removed from materiality and the confines of the flesh and the built environment, a liberation from old institutions and power structures. But since then, the virtual has grown into a distinct yet related sphere of cultural and political production that both parallels and occasionally flows over into the old world of material objects. The strict dichotomy of matter and digital purity has been replaced more recently with a more complex model where both the world of stuff and the world of knowledge support, resist and at the same time contain each other. Online social networks amplify and extend existing ones; other cultural interfaces like youtube have not replaced the communal experience of watching moving images in a semi-public space (the cinema) or the semi-private space (the family living room). Rather the experience of viewing is very much about sharing and communicating, offering interpretations and comments. Many of the web’s strongest entities (Amazon, eBay, Gumtree etc.) sit exactly at this juncture of applying tools taken from the knowledge management industry to organize the chaos of the material world along (post-)Fordist rationality. Since the early 1990s there have been many artistic and curatorial attempts to use the Internet as a platform of producing and exhibiting art, but a lot of these were reluctant to let go of the fantasy of digital freedom. Storage Room collapses the binary opposition of real and virtual space by using online data storage as a conduit for IRL art production. The artworks here will not be available for viewing online in a 'screen' environment but only as part of a downloadable package with the intention that the exhibition could be displayed (in a physical space) by any interested party and realised as ambitiously or minimally as the downloader wishes, based on their means. The artists will therefore also supply a set of instructions for the physical installation of the work alongside the digital files. In response to this curatorial initiative, File Transfer Protocol invites seven UK based artists to produce digital art for a physical environment, addressing the intersection between the virtual and the material. The files range from sound, video, digital prints and net art, blueprints for an action to take place, something to be made, a conceptual text piece, etc. About the works and artists: Polly Fibre is the pseudonym of London-based artist Christine Ellison. Ellison creates live music using domestic devices such as sewing machines, irons and slide projectors. Her costumes and stage sets propose a physical manifestation of the virtual space that is created inside software like Photoshop. For this exhibition, Polly Fibre invites the audience to create a musical composition using a pair of amplified scissors and a turntable. http://www.pollyfibre.com John Russell, a founding member of 1990s art group Bank, is an artist, curator and writer who explores in his work the contemporary political conditions of the work of art. In his digital print, Russell collages together visual representations of abstract philosophical ideas and transforms them into a post apocalyptic landscape that is complex and banal at the same time. www.john-russell.org The work of Bristol based artist Jem Nobel opens up a dialogue between the contemporary and the legacy of 20th century conceptual art around questions of collectivism and participation, authorship and individualism. His print SPACE concretizes the representation of the most common piece of Unicode: the vacant space between words. In this way, the gap itself turns from invisible cipher to sign. www.jemnoble.com Annabel Frearson is rewriting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein using all and only the words from the original text. Frankenstein 2, or the Monster of Main Stream, is read in parts by different performers, embodying the psychotic character of the protagonist, a mongrel hybrid of used language. www.annabelfrearson.com Darren Banks uses fragments of effect laden Holywood films to create an impossible space. The fictitious parts don't add up to a convincing material reality, leaving the viewer with a failed amalgamation of simulations of sophisticated technologies. www.darrenbanks.co.uk FIELDCLUB is collaboration between artist Paul Chaney and researcher Kenna Hernly. Chaney and Hernly developed together a project that critically examines various proposals for the management of sustainable ecological systems. Their FIELDMACHINE invites the public to design an ideal agricultural field. By playing with different types of crops that are found in the south west of England, it is possible for the user, for example, to create a balanced, but protein poor, diet or to simply decide to 'get rid' of half the population. The meeting point of the Platonic field and it physical consequences, generates a geometric abstraction that investigates the relationship between modernist utopianism and contemporary actuality. www.fieldclub.co.uk Pil and Galia Kollectiv, who have also curated the exhibition are London-based artists and run the xero, kline & coma gallery. Here they present a dialogue between two computers. The conversation opens with a simple text book problem in business studies. But gradually the language, mimicking the application of game theory in the business sector, becomes more abstract. The two interlocutors become adversaries trapped forever in a competition without winners. www.kollectiv.co.uk

Brain is next in wiring up to the Internet

Professor Kevin Warwick (Cybernetics) describes the pioneering experiment to link his nervous system to the internet.

Branding in the post-internet era

The internet and its related e-technologies have to a large extent upset the asymmetry of information that for so many years worked in favour of brand managers. Consumers are now empowered to interact with brands and other consumers but also to create their own content on user generated content sites leading to a more participative approach to branding. Internet brands adopt a more relaxed stance on brand management, which involves the consumer in fundamental stages of the brand building process. In this context, the brand manager is no longer a `guardian' of the brand but becomes more of a brand `host'. The question is to what extent can traditional companies follow suit? Are they comfortable to cede control to consumers? Do we need a new theory of branding in an e-space?