1. A method for thwarting circumvention of watermark detection, comprising: receiving a content at a content handling device that is equipped with a watermark extractor, the content comprising one or more embedded watermarks, the watermarks having been embedded in a first form of the content; and performing a signal processing operation on the received content, wherein the signal processing operation does not substantially degrade perceptual quality of the received content if the received content is in the first form, and wherein the signal processing operation substantially degrades perceptual quality of the received content if, in an attempt to circumvent detection of one or more of the embedded watermarks, the received content has been modified to be in a second form.