Digital content distribution

• US 20040078293A1
• Filed: 12/21/2000
• Published: 04/22/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 12/21/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Original Assignee: Intel Corporation
• Inventors: Iverson, Vaughn, Schwartz, Todd
• Granted Patent: US 6,938,005 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/27
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0613 Third-party assisted
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0625 Directed, with specific intent or strategy
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces

Abstract

A manifest is created that represents a created work in electronic form. The manifest may reference multiple digital resources that together make up the good, as well as related resources not originally a part of the good. For example, an electronic version of a music album may include image files for the cover art, audio files for the songs, and text files for the lyrics. The manifest may include structured meta-data to facilitate finding, obtaining, exchanging the digital content. The manifest and referenced content may have associated meta-data describing, for example, manifest contents or distribution rules. A receiver of the manifest may apply global and/or user rules or policies to meta-data to determine what portions of the manifest, if any, comply thereto, and to edit or delete the manifest accordingly.

Claims

1. A method to electronically represent a work, comprising:

storing in a manifest a first reference to a first digital resource, and a first metadata describing the first digital resource;

storing in the manifest a second reference to a second digital resource, and a second meta-data describing the second digital resource; and

storing in the manifest a structural relationship between said first and second digital resources;

wherein the manifest comprises structure corresponding to the work.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the work is a digital representation of a physical good, and the manifest comprises structure corresponding to the physical good.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing within the manifest selected ones of;

purchasing data for the work, purchasing data for said digital resources, intended audience ratings for said digital resources, content ratings for said digital resources, and processing rules describing how a machine is to process the manifest.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein said digital resource includes selected ones of audio data, video data, audiovisual data, image data, binary data, world wide web documents, virtual reality data, textual data, holographic data, and programming language programs.

40. An article comprising a machine accessible medium having instruction encoded thereon for collecting and managing digital content, said instructions, which when executed by a machine, are capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 1.

41. The article of claim 40, said instructions including further instructions capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 2.

43. The article of claim 41, said instructions including further instructions capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 7.

44. The article of claim 43, said instructions including further instructions capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 8.

4. A method for defining a manifest for a specific digital representation of a work, comprising:

storing in the manifest a first reference to a first digital resource;

storing in the manifest a first meta-data describing selected ones of the manifest and the first digital resource; and

making the first manifest available for receiving by a receiver; and

associating the first reference and the first meta-data so that the manifest comprises structure corresponding to a physical good.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the first meta-data comprises an intended-audience attribute.

7. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

storing purchasing data for the first digital resource in the manifest to facilitate a purchase decision by a receiver of the manifest.

8. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

storing in the manifest a second reference to a second digital resource, said first and second digital resource encoding an original resource with differing encoding quality; and

setting prices in the purchasing data for said first and second resources based at least in part on said encoding quality.

9. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

storing in the manifest a second reference to a second digital resource related to but not included in the physical good.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising:

storing in the manifest a second reference to a second digital resource, said first and second digital resource encoding an original resource with differing encoding quality; and

setting prices in the purchasing data for said first and second resources based at least in part on said encoding quality.

11. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

storing content ratings information within the manifest so that the receiver can filter content according to said content ratings.

12. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

storing digital rights management information within the manifest.

13. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

storing authentication information within the manifest.

14. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

storing in the manifest a second reference to a second digital resource, said first and second digital resources encoding an original resource with differing encoding quality.

15. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

encoding the manifest with a hierarchical tag based markup language; and

structuring the manifest with respect to a rules-based grammar.

42. An article comprising a machine accessible medium having instructions encoded thereon for defining a manifest for digital content, said instructions, which when executed by a machine, are capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 4.

16. A method for processing a collection of digital content received by a receiver having at least one policy affecting receipt of collections, comprising:

receiving a manifest for a work comprising a description of data stored by the collection, a reference to a first digital resource, and meta-data describing the first digital content, wherein the manifest comprises a relationship between the reference and said meta-data so that the manifest includes structure corresponding to the work;

testing compliance of the description with the policy;

determining if the manifest can be edited to comply with the policy; and

if not, disposing of the manifest.

17. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

providing a search query for locating digital content to a search agent; and

receiving the manifest in response to the search query.

18. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

the manifest further comprising a second reference to second digital content, second meta-data describing the second digital content, and purchasing data for said first and second digital content;

deciding to obtain the collection;

determining the first digital content was not previously obtained;

determining the second digital content has been previously been obtained; and

purchasing only the first digital content in accord with said purchasing data.

19. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

the manifest further comprising a second reference to second digital content, second meta-data describing the second digital content;

deciding to obtain the first collection;

determining the second digital content has been previously been obtained, said determining being based on the second digital content already being present in a selected one of;

a cache, another collection, or a local storage device; and

obtaining only the first digital content.

45. An article comprising a machine accessible medium having instructions encoded thereon for processing a collection of digital content received by a receiver having at least one policy affecting receipt of collections, said instructions, which when executed by a machine, are capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 16.

46. The article of claim 45, said instructions including further instructions capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 17.

47. The article of claim 45, said instructions including further instructions capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 18.

48. The article of claim 45, said instructions including further instructions capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 19.

20. A digital content management system, comprising:

a storage for storing digital content collections, wherein a collection comprises a link reference to digital content, and meta-data describing selected ones of said digital content and the collection;

a communication agent communicatively coupled to the storage;

a receiver communicatively coupled to the communication agent, said receiver configured to inspect said meta-data and process the collection accordingly; and

a transmitter communicatively coupled to the communication agent, said transmitter configured to inspect the reference to digital content to confirm retrievability of the digital content, and to make the collection available to other digital content management systems.

21. The system of claim 20, further comprising:

a creation tool for creating the collection; and

a user interface communicatively coupled to the creation tool, said user interface having a first interface tool to facilitate selection of the digital content, and a second interface tool to facilitate entering said meta-data.

22. The system of claim 21, further comprising:

a search agent configured to receive a search criteria and search for digital content collections satisfying said search criteria; and

a commerce agent comprising a purchasing tool configured to determine purchasing requirements for received digital content collections, and a payment tool configured to purchase digital content in accord with said purchasing requirements.

23. The system of claim 20, wherein digital content collections are encoded with a hierarchical tag based markup language.

24. The system of claim 20, further comprising:

a policy checker configured to check digital content collections received by the communication agent against a policy of the receiver;

a digital content collection editor, communicatively coupled to the policy checker, said editor configured to change digital content collections to comply with the policy; and

a digital content collection rejecter, communicatively coupled to said editor, said rejecter configured to reject received digital content collections.

25. The system of claim 24, wherein said digital content collection rejecter is configured to reject digital content collections that cannot be edited to comply with the policy.

26. The system of claim 20, further comprising:

a search agent configured to locate digital content satisfying a search criteria, said locating including searching the storage for satisfying digital content.

27. The system of claim 26, wherein the storage is communicatively coupled to the system through a network connection.

28. A method for collecting and managing digital content, comprising:

determining a first digital resource to include in a collection;

storing a first reference to the first resource in the collection;

determining a first meta-data of the first resource;

storing said associated first meta-data in the collection;

storing the collection in a storage accessible by a receiver;

inspecting, by the receiver, of the first meta-data description; and

determining, based at least on said inspecting, whether to obtain the first resource according to the first reference.

29. The method of claim 28, further comprising:

associating security data with the collection to facilitate detecting alterations to the collection.

30. The method of claim 28, further comprising:

determining compliance of the collection with a receiver policy;

editing the collection to conform the collection to the receiver policy; and

revising, by the receiver, said associated security in accordance with said editing.

31. The method of claim 30, wherein said revising comprises the receiver cryptographically signing some or all of the collection to facilitate identifying that said receiver performed said revising.

32. The method of claim 28, further comprising:

logically structuring the collection to correspond to a physical good.

49. An article comprising a machine accessible medium having instruction encoded thereon for collecting and managing digital content, said instructions, which when executed by a machine, are capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 28.

50. The article of claim 45, said instructions including further instructions capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 29.

33. A sales method utilizing a collection description describing a seller collection, comprising:

assigning a category to the collection description to facilitate management of the seller collection according to the category;

determining a first resource to be sold with the seller collection;

determining a first meta-data describing the first resource;

storing the first meta-data in the collection description;

storing at least one reference to the first resource in the collection description, where plural references may be used to provide the first resource to the buyer at different quality levels;

associating pricing data with each reference to the first resource; and

storing said pricing data in the collection description.

34. The method of claim 33, further comprising:

providing the collection description to a buyer agent;

identifying buyer access of the resource; and

charging the buyer according to pricing data associated with the resource.

35. The method of claim 34, wherein the buyer agent is the buyer.

36. A rules-based method for declaring a decision tree for a manifest for a work, comprising:

storing a first choice within the manifest;

associating first meta-data with the first choice;

association a first selection with the first choice;

wherein a portion of the manifest is dependent on the first selection.

37. The method of claim 36, further comprising:

storing a second selection within the manifest;

wherein said dependency for the portion of the manifest is predicated on said first and second selections.

38. The method of claim 36, further comprising:

associating second meta-data with the selection.

39. The method of claim 36, wherein the first selection is either inclusive or exclusive.

51. An article comprising a machine accessible medium having instruction encoded thereon for collecting and managing digital content, said instructions, which when executed by a machine, are capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 36.

52. The article of claim 51, said instructions including further instructions capable of directing the machine to perform the operations of claim 37