A note about the identifier parent property in Reed-Solomon codes

Codes with traceability properties are used in schemes where the identification of users that illegally redistribute content is required. For any code with traceability properties, the Identifiable Parent Property (c-IPP) seems to be less restrictive than the Traceability (c-TA) property. In this paper, we show that for Reed-Solomon codes both properties are in many cases equivalent. More precisely, we show that for an [n, k, d] Reed-Solomon code, defined over a field that contains the n – d roots of unity, both properties are equivalent. Also, we show how the strategy we propose can be applied to other cases by proving the equivalence of both properties for a particular code of characteristic 2. This answers a question posted by Silverberg et al. (2001, 2003), for a large family of Reed-Solomon codes. a 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.