CONTENT AGING

• US 20110131664A1
• Filed: 12/01/2009
• Published: 06/02/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/01/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications USA Incorporated (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications USA Incorporated (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Jonsson, Håkan Lars Emanuel
• Application Number:
  US12/628,352
• Publication Number:
  US 20110131664A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 726/28
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/10 Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material protection in video systems or pay television H04N7/16 ; Digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2137 Time limited access, e.g. to a computer or data
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/00086 Circuits for prevention of unauthorised reproduction or copying, e.g. piracy indicating unauthorised use of record carriers in general G11B23/28; scrambling for television signal recording H04N5/913; network architectures or network protocols for network security H04L63/00; cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for secret or secure communication H04L9/00
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/00826 wherein a spoiler signal is added to degrade the signal quality
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/0084 wherein the usage restriction can be expressed as a specific time or date
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/00869 wherein the remote server can deliver the content to a receiving device
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 2020/10537 Audio or video recording

Abstract

A device includes a memory to store instructions; and a processor to execute the instructions to determine that access rights, associated with a particular user in relation to particular content, have expired; degrade an appearance of the particular content or a representation of the particular content, where the degradation is amplified over a grace period that commences upon the expiration of the access rights, in response to determining that the access rights have expired; determine that the grace period associated with the expired access rights has ended; and end access to the particular content, in response to determining that the grace period has ended.

Claims

1. A device, comprising:

a memory to store instructions; and

a processor to execute the instructions to;

determine that access rights, associated with a particular user in relation to particular content, have expired;

degrade an appearance of the particular content or a representation of the particular content, where the degradation is amplified over a grace period that commences upon the expiration of the access rights, in response to determining that the access rights have expired;

determine that the grace period associated with the expired access rights has ended; and

end access to the particular content, in response to determining that the grace period has ended.

2. The device of claim 1, where the processor is to degrade the particular content in response to the particular user accessing the particular content.

3. The device of claim 1, where the particular content includes at least one of a document, an image, an audio file, or a video file.

4. The device of claim 1, where degrading an appearance of the particular content or a representation of the particular content includes degrading the representation of the particular content, where the representation of the particular content includes at least one of an icon associated with the particular content or a link associated with the particular content.

5. The device of claim 1, where the processor is to degrade the content based on content aging specifications associated with the particular content.

6. The device of claim 5, where the processor is further to:

receive the content aging specifications from a content provider associated with the particular content.

7. The device of claim 5, where the content aging specifications include a degradation function that includes a linear degradation function, an exponential decay degradation function, or a parabolic degradation function.

8. The device of claim 1, where the processor is further to:

determine that time-sensitive content associated with the particular user is expired or is out of date; and

degrade a representation of the time-sensitive content, where the degradation is amplified over a particular period of time, in response to determining that the time-sensitive content has expired or is out of date.

9. The device of claim 8, where the representation of the time-sensitive content includes one of a synchronization icon, a contacts icon, or an icon associated with a data feed.

10. A method performed by a computer device, the method comprising:

determining, using a processor of the computer device, that access rights, associated with a particular user in relation to particular content, have expired;

degrading, using the processor, an appearance of the particular content or a representation of the particular content, where degrading effects associated with the degrading are amplified over a grace period that commences upon the expiration of the access rights, in response to determining that the access rights have expired;

determining, using the processor, that the grace period associated with the expired access rights has ended; and

ending, using the processor, access to the particular content, in response to determining that the grace period has ended.

11. The method of claim 10, where the particular content includes at least one of a document, an image, an audio file, or a video file.

12. The method of claim 10, where degrading an appearance of the particular content or a representation of the particular content includes degrading the representation of the particular content, where the representation of the particular content includes at least one of an icon associated with the particular content or a link associated with the particular content.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

determining content aging specifications associated with the particular content.

14. The method of claim 13, where the content aging specifications are determined based on at least one of a type of the particular content or a content provider associated with the particular content.

15. The method of claim 13, where the content aging specifications include a degradation function that includes a linear degradation function, an exponential decay degradation function, or a parabolic degradation function.

16. The method of claim 10, where the degrading the particular content or a representation of the particular content comprises applying a particular image processing algorithm or a particular signal processing algorithm to the particular content or a representation of the particular content.

17. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

determining that time-sensitive content associated with the particular user is expired or is out of date; and

degrading a representation of the time-sensitive content, where the degrading is amplified over a particular period of time, in response to determining that the time-sensitive content has expired or is out of date.

18. The method of claim 17, where the representation of the time-sensitive content includes one of a synchronization icon, a contacts icon, or an icon associated with a data feed.

19. The method of claim 17, where the degrading of a representation of the time-sensitive content includes replacing the representation of the time-sensitive content with a representation of the time-sensitive content that has an aged appearance.

20. One or more memory devices storing instructions executable by one or more processors, the one or more memory devices comprising:

one or more instructions to determine that access rights, associated with a particular user in relation to particular content, have expired;

one or more instructions to degrade an appearance of the particular content or a representation of the particular content, where the degradation is amplified over a grace period that commences upon expiration of the access rights, in response to determining that the access rights have expired;

one or more instructions to determine that the grace period associated with the expired access rights has ended; and

one or more instructions to end access to the particular content, in response to determining that the grace period has ended.