Wide-Sense 2-Frameproof Codes

Abstract

Various kinds of fingerprinting codes and their related combinatorial structures are extensively studied for protecting copyrighted materials. This paper concentrates on one specialised fingerprinting code named wide-sense frameproof codes in order to prevent innocent users from being framed. Let $Q$ be a finite alphabet of size $q$. Given a $t$-subset $X=\{x ^1,\ldots, x ^t\}\subseteq Q^n$, a position $i$ is called undetectable for $X$ if the values of the words of $X$ match in their $i$th position: $x_i^1=\cdots=x_i^t$. The wide-sense descendant set of $X$ is defined by $\wdesc(X)=\{y\in Q^n:y_i=x_i^1,i\in {U}(X)\},$ where ${U}(X)$ is the set of undetectable positions for $X$. A code ${\cal C}\subseteq Q^n$ is called a wide-sense $t$-frameproof code if $\wdesc(X) \cap{\cal C} = X$ for all $X \subseteq {\cal C}$ with $|X| \le t$. The paper improves the upper bounds on the sizes of wide-sense $2$-frameproof codes by applying techniques on non $2$-covering Sperner families and intersecting families in extremal set theory.