Method and mechanism for vending digital content

• US 6,993,508 B1
• Filed: 12/29/2000
• Issued: 01/31/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 12/29/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: Novell Incorporated (Open Text Corporation)
• Inventors: Orman, Hilarie, Carter, Stephen R., Major, Robert Drew
• Primary Examiner(s): CHEUNG, MARY DA ZHI WANG
• Application Number:
  US09/752,348
• Time in Patent Office: 1,859 Days
• Field of Search: 705/14, 705 51- 54, 705 57- 59, 380210-212, 380230-233, 725 1- 4, 725 9- 12, 713150-155, 707 9- 10
• US Class Current: 705/51
• 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: G06Q 20/123 Shopping for digital content
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/1235 with control of digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2463/101 applying security measures for digital rights management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0428 wherein the data content is protected, e.g. by encrypting or encapsulating the payload

Abstract

An Internet Box Office (IBO) system and technique vends digital content via a computer network, such as the Internet. The IBO system comprises a viewing system that cooperates with a Digital Rights Management system and various deployment enhancements within the Internet to provide an infrastructure that facilitates access to digital content in a manner that comports with copyright law and the control of intellectual property by the copyright owner. The IBO system enables a content copyright owner to retain control of its intellectual property while allowing a consumer to have transparent access to the copyright-protected content via the network. To that end, the IBO system operates to download and stage the copyrighted digital content on the viewing system of a consumer.

Claims

1. An Internet Box Office (IBO) system adapted to vend multimedia digital content via a computer network to a consumer, the IBO system comprising:

a content delivery networking (CDN) infrastructure of the computer network, the CDN infrastructure including deployment enhancements that pre-download and distribute the multimedia digital content over the network from a digital content management system;

a viewing system coupled to the deployment enhancements of the CDN infrastructure and external to an environment associated with the deployment enhancements, the viewing system capable of displaying the multimedia digital content to the consumer;

a digital rights management (DRM) system coupled to the viewing system, the DRM system functioning to authorize the multimedia digital content for viewing by the consumer; and

the digital content management system configured to store the multimedia digital content in encrypted form, the digital content management system interacting with the deployment enhancements of the CDN infrastructure to schedule delivery of the encrypted content to the viewing system upon authorization by the DRM system, and wherein that dynamically decrypts the encrypted content based on authorization received from the DRM.

2. The IBO system of claim 1 further comprising a web server coupled to the viewing system and configured to organize titles of the multimedia digital content for browsing by the consumer when selecting the multimedia digital content.

3. An Internet Box Office (IBO) system for vending digital content via a computer network to a consumer, the IBO system comprising:

a viewing system, the viewing system being in electronic communication with the computer network and the viewing system having a user interface;

a movie management system in electronic communication with the viewing system through the computer network, the movie management system having a play list manager, the play list manager having a list of titles of the digital content available for viewing and selecting through the user interface, and wherein the movie management system interacts with one or more devices, which are in an external environment to the viewing system, the one or more devices are for pre-acquiring and distributing encrypted digital content from the movie management system to the viewing system, and wherein the devices are separate from the viewing system, and the encrypted digital content are delivered directly from the one or more devices to the viewing system;

a rights management system for granting a right to view a selected digital content, which is encrypted, represented by the title selected through the movie management system, the right to view being granted by downloading to the viewing system a decryption key enabling decryption of the selected encrypted digital content; and

a display for viewing the selected encrypted digital content which is downloaded from the movie management system to the viewing system, the download is scheduled and the selected digital content being dynamically decrypted, through use of the decryption key downloaded from the right management system to the viewing system, so that no decrypted version of the selected encrypted digital content is stored on the viewing system.

4. The IBO system of claim 3, the rights management system further comprising:

a billing system for accepting payment through the viewing system for the right to view, the billing system having the capability of applying a discount if the consumer has agreed to view digital content in addition to the selected digital content.

5. The IBO system of claim 3 wherein the digital content further comprises:

interactive digital content, movies, ads, and trailers.

6. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

the viewing system receives from the movie management system and displays to the consumer information about the status of the digital content being downloaded.

7. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

the rights management system protects the decryption key during a fixed length of time and ensures that the decryption key expires after the fixed length of time.

8. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

the rights management system provides usage tools for controlling interfaces between the consumer and the digital content, and tracking tools for use and distribution of the digital content.

9. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

secure and managed communication through the computer network to protect the rights of an owner of the digital content.

10. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

a policy management process for leasing the digital content, a monitoring process for monitoring adherence to the lease of the digital content, and a purging process for erasing the downloaded digital content when the lease expires.

11. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

the movie management system has a plurality of movie studio web servers.

12. The IBO system of claim 11 further comprising:

the movie studio web servers are located at a plurality of web sites.

13. The IBO system of claim 12 further comprising:

the movie management system cooperates with the viewing system to optimally schedule downloading of the selected digital content from the movie studio web servers based on consumer directions.

14. The IBO system of claim 12 further comprising:

a web content acceleration system that accelerates the downloading of the digital content from the movie management system to the viewing system by using a cache local to the viewing system.

15. The IBO system of claim 14 further comprising:

the web content acceleration system intercepts requests from the consumer for the selected digital content, retrieves the selected digital content from the movie management system, caches the selected digital content, and forwards the selected digital content to the viewing system.

16. The IBO system of claim 12 wherein the web content acceleration system comprises:

at least one cache located as physically close as possible to the viewing system to which the download is destined.

17. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

a screen saver function wherein the consumer can view a trailer during screen saver time on the viewing system and initiate downloading a movie associated with the trailer.

18. The IBO system of claim 3, further comprising:

the digital content is copyrighted;

a managed storage system for storing the encrypted digital content on the viewing system in encrypted form to prevent unauthorized copying of the copyrighted digital content.

19. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

a feature permitting the consumer to choose a time at which to view the downloaded digital content.

20. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

a downloading convoy, the download convoy responds to a download request from the movie management system to download the selected digital content to a plurality of consumers.

21. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

a download manager which automatically resumes an interrupted download operation.

22. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

portions of the selected encrypted digital content are queued so that the computer network substantially maintains its pre-download performance.

23. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

an access tracking process to track the consumer'"'"'s access to trailers and allow the consumer to specify a maximum number of the trailers to download for each movie downloaded.

24. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

the user interface is a web browser.

25. The IBO system of claim 3 further comprising:

provision to accommodate streaming video media.

26. A method of operating an Internet Box Office (IBO) system for vending digital content via a computer network to a consumer using a viewing system, comprising:

accessing a computer network through the viewing system;

browsing, through a play list manager in electronic communication through the computer network with the viewing system, a list of titles of the digital content available for viewing;

selecting, from the play list manager, a title for viewing;

granting a right to view the title by a rights management system;

scheduling a download from a movie management system to the viewing system the selected digital content for which the rights management system has granted the right to view, the selected digital content in encrypted form and downloading the digital content when scheduled to do so, and wherein the movie management system interacts with deployment enhancements that are in a separate environment from the viewing system, and wherein the deployment enhancements pre-acquire the selected digital content from the movie management system and directly distribute the selected digital content to the viewing system;

downloading to the viewing system from the rights management system a decryption key associated with the selected digital content that enables dynamic decryption of the selected digital content so that no decrypted version of the selected digital content is stored on the viewing system; and

viewing on the viewing system the selected digital content.

27. The method of claim 26 wherein the step of browsing comprises:

accessing at least one web server that contains a list of titles of the digital content available for viewing.

28. The method of claim 26 wherein the step of selecting the title further comprises:

adding the title selected to a running list of selections.

29. The method of claim 26 further comprising

paying the rights management system for a right to view selected digital content.

30. The method of claim 29 further comprising:

paying for the title selected through the play list manager.

31. The method of claim 29 further comprising:

paying for a plurality of titles selected by the consumer.

32. The method of claim 29 further wherein the step of paying for the right to view the content further comprises:

finalizing a running list of selections, registering the selected digital content with the rights management system, calculating a price, and applying a discount to the price if the consumer agrees to view other content that warrants the discount.

33. A method for use of an Internet Box Office (IBO) system for vending copyright-protected multimedia digital content via a computer network to a consumer, the IBO system having a viewing system, a digital rights management system, and a digital content management system, the method comprising:

finding and selecting, through cooperation of the viewing system and the digital content management system, multimedia digital content for playing back;

scheduling a downloaded encrypted multimedia digital content from the digital content management system to the viewing system and downloading the digital content when scheduled to do so, and wherein a least a portion of the digital content is supplied from a device during the download, wherein the device is in a separate environment from the viewing system and the device directly pre-acquires from the digital content management system the portion and distributes the portion from the device to the viewing system; and

displaying to the consumer, through the cooperation of the viewing system and the digital rights management system, the copyright-protected multimedia digital content as the digital content is dynamically decrypted, and no decrypted version of the digital content is saved on the viewing system.

34. The method of claim 33 further comprising

presenting, through cooperation of the digital content management system and the viewing system, download status information;

detecting of, and automatic restarting after, a download interruption; and

notifying the consumer of the download interruption and new availability time for the digital content.

35. A node for carrying out the method according to claim 33.

36. A communications network comprising:

at least one node for carrying out the method according to claim 33.

37. A computer-readable medium comprising:

instructions and data written thereon, said instructions and data containing information for the practice of the method according to claim 33.

38. Electromagnetic signals traveling over a computer network comprising:

said electromagnetic signals carrying information for the practice of the method of claim 33.