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 content, wherein the signal processing operation does not substantially degrade perceptual quality of the content if the content is in the first form, and wherein the signal processing operation substantially degrades perceptual quality of the content if the content is in a second form.