A method and apparatus for delivering watermarked digital media content to a user upon request

摘要

The present invention provides a means and an apparatus for watermarking a digital signal. A particular content which is to be made available by a content provider to potential content users is prepared by encoding the content into a plurality of encoded streams, each encoded stream being encoded according to a different bit-rate. Each encoded stream comprises a plurality of chunks and each chunk is retrievable by a requestor of content. Upon request of said content by a user, the plurality of chunks making up the content are selected from the plurality of the different encoded streams and a subset from that plurality of chunks is watermarked using a unique identifying parameter associated with the requestor.