About SmartMarks™
SmartMarks are an example of an ancient technique for hiding information called steganography. Here's the introduction section from the Steganography entry at WikiPedia :
Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart from the intended recipient knows of the existence of the message; this is in contrast to cryptography , where the existence of the message itself is not disguised, but the meaning is obscured. "Steganography" is a Greek word and means covered or hidden writing. Its origins can be traced back to 440 BC. Herodotus mentions two examples of Steganography in The Histories of Herodotus[1] . Demeratus sent a warning about a forthcoming attacks to Xerxes by writing it on a wooden panel and covering it in wax. The second example is Histaeus who shaved the head of his most trusted slave and tatooed a message on his head. After his hair had grown the message was hidden. The purpose was to instigate a revolt against the Persians. Later, Johannes Trithemius's book Steganographia is a treatise on cryptography and steganography disguised as a book on black magic.
Generally a steganographic message will appear to be something else: a picture, an article, a shopping list, or some other "cover" message.
Steganographic messages are often first encrypted by some traditional means, and then a covertext is modified in some way to contain the encrypted message, resulting in stegotext. For example, the letter size, spacing, typeface , or other characteristics of a covertext can be manipulated to carry the hidden message; only the recipient (who must know the technique used) can recover the message and then decrypt it. Francis Bacon is known to have suggested such a technique to hide messages.
SmartMarks are a modern form of steganography using video processing techniques to embed secret data in video content.
SmartMarks are both invisible and effectively unremovable. They have proven able to survive a wide number of attacks, including
Video processing attacks, such as Digital-to-analog and Analog-to-digital conversions, re-sampling and re-quantization and common signal enhancements to image contrast and color
StirMark" attacks, including resizing, letterboxing, aperture control, low-pass filtering and anti-aliasing, frame-swapping, compression, scaling, cropping, overwriting, the addition of noise and other transformations
Collusion, which is the combining of multiple videos in the attempt remove the SmartMark
Attempts at sync separation, the cutting off or damaging of the horizontal and vertical sync signals that are embedded into a composite (analog) video as well as into a digital video stream;
Format conversion, the changing of frequencies and spatial resolution among NTSC, PAL, and SECAM.
When you see the SmartMark logo, either on a DVD cover or at the beginning of a movie, you know that the content is protected by the most advanced forensic technology available. When such content is pirated and ultimately finds its way into the hands of law enforcement, they now have the concrete evidence regarding the nature and point of actual piracy needed to indict and convict criminals in court. SmartMarks make it easy for law enforcement to catch the originators of pirated material without restricting the fair use of properly licensed material. They let you watch movies the way you've become accustomed to while fighting piracy through effective forensic evidence.
If you have content that you think might be pirated, the MPAA maintains a toll-free anti-piracy Hotline number (1-800-NO-COPYS) in the U.S. for retailers and consumers to call if they suspect piracy. In addition, complaints can be directed to the MPAA email hotline at Your privacy will be protected.
Last Updated ( Monday, 30 October 2006 )