Optimized secure media playback control

• US 7,460,668 B2
• Filed: 07/21/2004
• Issued: 12/02/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 07/21/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sonic IP Incorporated (Endeavor Group Holdings Inc.)
• Original Assignee: DIVX Incorporated (FIG LLC (d/b/a Fortress Investment Group LLC))
• Inventors: Grab, Eric William
• Primary Examiner(s): HENEGHAN, MATTHEW E
• Application Number:
  US10/895,355
• Publication Number:
  US 20060020825A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,595 Days
• Field of Search: 380/240
• US Class Current: 380/240
• 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]

Abstract

A media player manages and controls rights to playback of media content by the media player, which stores, during a registration process in which the media player need not be connected to an external computing system, information used by the media player to control playback. A minimal amount of the media player'"'"'s memory is used to store the information used to control playback.

Claims

1. A method for configuring a media player to manage rights to playback of media content, the media player possessing a pluratity of master keys, the method comprising:

randomly generating and storing a guard;

providing registration information including the stored guard and an identifier of a master key, the registration information for use in generating configuration information and for selecting a key used to encrypt the configuration information;

receiving the encrypted configuration information, which includes a guard, an encryption key and an associated identifier identifying the encryption key;

decrypting the encrypted configuration information using one of the stored plurality of master keys indicated by the identifier of a master key; and

storing the encryption key and the associated identifier in memory of the player in a case that the received guard is determined to match the stored guard.

2. A method according to claim 1, wherein the player displays the registration information on a television monitor.

3. A method according to claim 1, wherein the registration information is encoded as an alphanumeric character string.

4. A method according to claim 1, wherein the encryption key and associated identifier are associated with a user of the player.

5. A method according to claim 1, wherein the stored guard is reset with a randomly-generated value for another configuration use.

6. A method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving a request from a user for media content;

retrieving from memory of a server a user encryption key and associated identifier;

encrypting the media content using the user encryption key and storing the associated identifier with the encrypted media content; and

outputting the encrypted media content and the identifier in an electronic format to the user for input to the player.

7. A method according to claim 6, wherein the electronic formation is a file which is output for storage on a removable storage medium.

8. A method according to claim 6 wherein a serial number and number of authorized views are output with the media content.

20. A computer-readable memory medium in which computer-executable process steps are stored, the process steps for performing a method according to any of claims 1 to 8.

21. Computer-executable program code stored on a computer readable medium, said computer-executable program code for performing a method according to any of claims 1 to 8.

9. A method of managing rights to playback of media content by a media player which stores a known encryption key and a known identifier associated with the encryption key, where the media content is encrypted using the known encryption key and the identifier is stored with the media content, the method comprising:

receiving encrypted media content and an identifier stored with the encrypted media content;

retrieving from memory of the media player an encryption key having an associated identifier matching the received identifier; and

decrypting the media content using the retrieved encryption key;

wherein, in addition to the received identifier, a serial number and an authorized number of views are received with the media content;

wherein the received serial number and a corresponding number of views initialized to zero are stored in the player'"'"'s memory;

wherein the received serial number is determined to be greater than a value stored in the player memory, and where stored value is overwritten by the received value.

10. A method according to claim 9, wherein the player has a stored number of views associated with the media content, the method further comprising the steps of:

comparing the stored number of views to the authorized number of views; and

performing the step of decrypting the media content in a case that the stored number of views does not exceed the authorized number of views.

11. A method according to claim 10, further comprising the step of incrementing the stored number of views in a case that the step of decrypting the media content is performed.

12. A method according to claim 10, wherein a serial number associated with the stored number of views is stored in the player'"'"'s memory, the method further comprising the steps of:

comparing the serial number stored in the player'"'"'s memory with the serial number received with the media content; and

performing the step of decrypting the media content in a case that the serial numbers match and the stored number of views does not exceed the authorized number of views.

13. A method according to claim 12, wherein the player overwrites one of the memory slots to store the serial number and authorized number of views pair for the media content.

14. A method according to claim 13, wherein the memory slot that is overwritten is determined based on user input.

15. A method according to claim 9, wherein the player'"'"'s memory has a number of memory slots each of which is used to store a serial number and authorized number of views.

16. A method according to claim 15, wherein the identifier, a slot identification and the serial number uniquely identifies allowed playback of the media content.

17. A method for configuring a media player, comprising:

randomly generating and storing a guard;

providing registration information for use in generating configuration information, the registration information including the stored guard;

receiving the configuration information which includes a guard, an encryption key and an associated identifier identifying the encryption key, the encryption key and the associated identifier are stored in the media player'"'"'s memory in a case that the received guard matches the stored guard;

receiving encrypted media content and an accompanying encryption key identifier;

retrieving from the player'"'"'s memory an encryption key for use in decrypting the media content, the retrieved encryption key having an associated identifier determined to match the identifier accompanying the media content.

18. A method for use by a server, to generate information used in configuring a media player to manage rights to playback of media content, the media player randomly-generating and pre-storing a stored guard and pre-storing a plurality of master keys, the method comprising:

receiving registration information from a user, the registration information, which includes the stored guard and an identifier of a master key, is for use in generating configuration information;

selecting an encryption key and an associated identifier;

encrypting the encryption key and the associated identifier using the master key indicated by the identifier of a master key; and

outputting the encrypted configuration information comprising the encryption key, the associated identifier and the stored guard in an electronic format to the user for input to the player.

19. A method according to claim 18, wherein the electronic format is a file which is output for storage on a removable storage medium.