Digital rights management using geographic and temporal traits

• US 9,928,374 B2
• Filed: 12/18/2015
• Issued: 03/27/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 12/18/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Adobe Inc.
• Original Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (Adobe Inc.)
• Inventors: Anantharaman, Arun
• Primary Examiner(s): Korsak, Oleg
• Application Number:
  US14/975,442
• Publication Number:
  US 20170177886A1
• Time in Patent Office: 830 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/1013 to locations
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6209 to a single file or object, e.g. in a secure envelope, encrypted and accessed using a key, or with access control rules appended to the object itself
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0185 Product, service or business identity fraud

Abstract

Digital rights management using geographic and temporal traits is described. In one or more implementations, a digital medium environment is configured to control access to at least on item of content by digital rights management functionality embedded as part of the content. Data is collected describing geographical traits of a location or temporal traits associated with a request received from the user to access the content. A determination is made from the data using a digital rights management module embedded as part of the content as to whether the geographical or temporal traits meet specified traits of a geographical behavior of a digital rights management policy enforced by the digital rights management module for the at least one item of the content. Responsive to a determination that the specified traits are met, access is permitted to the least one item of the content by the embedded digital rights management module.

Claims

1. In a digital medium environment to control access to at least on item of content by digital rights management functionality embedded as part of the content, a method implemented by a computing device, the method comprising:

collecting data, using position determining functionality of the computing device, describing geographical traits of a location associated with a request received from the user to access the content;

collecting data by the computing device from at least one third party source that describes a likely location associated with the user;

determining from the data using a digital rights management module embedded as part of the content whether the geographical traits meet specified traits of a geographical behavior of a digital rights management policy enforced by the digital rights management module for the at least one item of the content, the determining including verifying the collected data describing the geographical traits of the location using the collected data from the at least one third party source without entry of credentials of the user; and

responsive to a determination that the specified traits are met, permitting access to the least one item of the content, by the embedded digital rights management module, at the location.

2. The method as described in claim 1, wherein the collecting of the data describing the geographical traits is performed at least in part by accessing an analytics service as the at least one third party source by the computing device over a network.

3. The method as described in claim 2, wherein the data is collected by the analytics service from one or more other service providers via the network, the data associated with the user that originated the request.

4. The method as described in claim 3, wherein the one or more other service providers include at least one social network service.

5. The method as described in claim 3, wherein the determining by the digital rights management module includes verifying data describing geographical traits that is generated using position determination functionality of the computing device using the data collected by the analytics service, the position determining functionality based at least in part on a global positioning system or triangulation through cell towers.

6. The method as described in claim 1, further comprising responsive to a determination that the specified traits are not met, restricting access to the least one item of the content and permitting access to another item of content in which the access to the other item of content is not permitted if the determination is made that the specified traits are met.

7. The method as described in claim 1, wherein the determining includes calculating a likelihood that access to the at least one item of the content will be compromised at the location associated with the user.

8. The method as described in claim 7, wherein the calculating includes comparing the location to a list of locations that have a pre-calculated likelihood of resulting in the at least one item of the content being compromised.

9. The method as described in claim 7, wherein the calculating includes parsing text that describes the location to calculate the likelihood, the data obtained by the computing device via a network.

10. The method as described in claim 1, further comprising responsive to a subsequent determination that the location associated with the user responsive to the request has changed to another location that does not meet the specified traits, blocking access to the at least one item of content through execution of the embedded digital rights management module by the at least one computing device.

11. The method as described in claim 1, wherein the at least one item of the content does not describe characteristics of the location and thus the determining and the permitting are performed by the digital rights management module regardless of whether the at least one item of content, itself, is otherwise associated with the location.

12. A computing device comprising:

a processing system;

position determining functionality to generate data describing geographical traits of the computing device; and

memory configured to maintain content having an embedded digital rights management module that is executable by the processing system to control access to respective ones of a plurality of items of the content based at least in part on a determination as to whether a request to access respective ones of a plurality of items of the content meets specified temporal and geographic traits of a behavior of a digital rights management policy enforced by the digital rights management module, the control including verifying the data describing geographical traits that is generated using position determination functionality of the computing device using data collected by an analytics service without entry of user credentials.

13. The computing device as described in claim 12, wherein data describing the geographical traits is collected through execution by the embedded digital rights management module to access the analytics service over a network.

14. The computing device as described in claim 13, wherein the data is collected by the analytics service from one or more other service providers via the network, the data describing the user that originated the request.

15. The computing device as described in claim 13, wherein the embedded digital rights management module is configured to control access to respective ones of the plurality of items of the content based on the specified temporal and geographic traits regardless of what is described by the respective ones of the plurality of items of the content.

16. In a digital medium environment to control access to at least on item of content by digital rights management functionality embedded as part of the content, a system comprising:

means for collecting data, using position determining functionality, describing geographical traits of a location associated with a request received from the user to access the content;

means for collecting data from at least one third party source that describes a likely location associated with the user;

means for determining from the data whether the geographical traits meet specified traits of a geographical behavior of a digital rights management policy enforced by the digital rights management module for the at least one item of the content, the determining including verifying the collected data describing the geographical traits of the location using the collected data from the at least one third party source without entry of credentials of the user; and

means permitting access to the least one item of the content at the location responsive to a determination that the specified traits are met.

17. The system as described in claim 16, wherein the data describing the geographical traits is collected at least in part by accessing an analytics service as the at least one third party source by the computing device over a network.

18. The system as described in claim 17, wherein the data is collected by the analytics service from one or more other service providers via the network, the data associated with the user that originated the request.

19. The system as described in claim 18, wherein the one or more other service providers include at least one social network service.

20. The system as described in claim 18, wherein the determining by the digital rights management module includes verifying data describing geographical traits that is generated using position determination functionality of the computing device using the data collected by the analytics service, the position determining functionality based at least in part on a global positioning system or triangulation through cell towers.