A fair online payment system for digital content via subliminal channel

In recent years, purchase of digital content using the Internet has been increasing both in popularity and convenience. On the other hand, there are a multitude of pirated editions for digital products which have become more available and easier to attain. Therefore, proving legal ownership of digital content has become important. Many researchers have proposed various schemes to protect consumer’s ownership using watermark mechanisms on secure payment systems. In our scheme, we want to achieve this same result with the concept of subliminal channels and propose an intact arbitration mechanism to solve the fairness of the transaction between both the customer and the shop. Our scheme not only protects customers’ legal ownership of digital content, but also provides a fair and secure protocol. 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.