Crowd Validated Internet Document Witnessing System

• US 20130263274A1
• Filed: 04/01/2012
• Published: 10/03/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 04/01/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Richard Lamb
• Original Assignee: Richard Lamb
• Inventors: Lamb, Richard
• Granted Patent: US 8,713,692 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 726/26
• 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 21/645 using a third party
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/12 Applying verification of the received information cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for data integrity or data verification H04L9/32
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A system and method that accepts material from the Internet, computes and maintains a computationally unique representation of the received material in a database, computes a computationally unique representation of the updated database state as a whole, publishes material and database representations in various forms for the global Internet audience to witness, and returns a time stamped attestation to the submitter of material as proof of the material being witnessed on the Internet along with unique database state and revenue generating advertisements. Published representations may include pictures, common words, or hexadecimal character string to facilitate Internet searching mechanisms.

Claims

1. An automated method for attesting to the publication of digital content on the Internet, comprising the steps of:

providing for author generation of digital content;

providing for reception of material via the public Internet;

providing for the calculation of cryptographic hash of received digital content;

providing for the storage of cryptographic hash, ancillary author information, time of reception, and cryptographic hash of overall database into the database if cryptographic hash of content and ancillary information do not already exist in the database;

providing for a response via the public Internet to the author indicating time at which content was received, ancillary author information, cryptographic hash representation of content, cryptographic hash of database after inclusion of author content, and Internet address where the author may retrieve this same attestation in downloadable document form;

providing for a response via the public Internet to the author indicating that submitted content has already been seen with time at which content was received, ancillary original author information, cryptographic hash representation of content, cryptographic hash of database after inclusion of original author content, and Internet address where this attestation is downloadable in permanent document form;

2. The method of claim 1, further providing downloadable document is digitally signed to protect it from modification;

3. The method of claim 2, further providing system regularly publishes current cryptographic hash of database and cryptographic hash of recently received contents on public web site;

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising representation of database hash as a picture either digitally created or linked to existing digitized images;

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising representation of ancillary information in hash form to address privacy concerns;

6. The method of claim 5, further comprising public web site contents are indexed for availability to search engines;

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising maintenance of web site content until search engine scans of directory contents have been completed;

8. The method of claim 7, further providing reception of content and delivery of response is any combination of e-mail, web page, or secured versions of same;

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising validation of the ancillary author information, including email from address, via standard cryptographic means such as digitally signed e-mail and client side authenticated web connections;

10. The method of claim 2, further comprising where witnessed content consist of web page, digital images, video, or software.