Game-theoretic strategies and equilibriums in multimedia fingerprinting social networks

Multimedia social network is a network infrastructure in which the social network users share multimedia contents with all different purposes. Analyzing user behavior in multimedia social networks helps design more secured and efficient multimedia and networking systems. Multimedia fingerprinting protects multimedia from illegal alterations and multiuser collusion is a cost-effective attack. The colluder social network is naturally formed during multiuser collusion with which colluders gain reward by redistributing the colluded multimedia contents. Since the colluders have conflicting interest, the maximal-payoff collusion for one colluder may not be the maximal-payoff collusion for others. Hence, before a collusion being successful, the colluders must bargain with each other to reach agreements. We first model the bargaining behavior among colluders as a noncooperative game and study four different bargaining solutions of this game. Moreover, the market value of the redistributed multimedia content is often time-sensitive. The earlier the colluded copy being released, the more the people are willing to pay for it. Thus, the colluders have to reach agreements on how to distribute reward and risk among themselves as soon as possible. This paper further incorporates this time-sensitiveness of the colluders' reward and studies the time-sensitive bargaining equilibrium. The study in this paper reveals the strategies that are optimal for the colluders; thus, all the colluders have no inventive to disagree. Such understanding reduces the possible types of collusion into a small finite set.