Secured seeding of data in a distributed environment

• US 20090024846A1
• Filed: 04/11/2006
• Published: 01/22/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/09/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NBC Universal Media LLC (Comcast Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Vvond, Inc.
• Inventors: Goodman, Andrew M., Ganesan, Prasanna
• Granted Patent: US 8,225,083 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/162
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/00 Accessing, addressing or allocating within memory systems or architectures digital input from, or digital output to record carriers, e.g. to disk storage units, G06F3/06
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/0464 using hop-by-hop encryption, i.e. wherein an intermediate entity decrypts the information and re-encrypts it before forwarding it
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/08 for authentication of entities cryptographic mechanisms or cryptographic arrangements for entity authentication H04L9/32

Abstract

Techniques for seeding data among client machines, also referred to as boxes herein, are disclosed. To prevent the data distributed among the boxes from being illegitimately accessed or possessed, according to one aspect of the present invention, each box is configured to perform what is referred to herein as a transcription process. In other words, when encrypted data is received, the data is decrypted and then re-encrypted with a key agreeable with a next box configured to receive the data.

Claims

1. A method of seeding media content, the method comprising:

determining a next box to receive data chunks after the data chunks are received;

decrypting the data chunks and re-encrypting the data chunks with a key agreeable with the next box; and

causing to release the data chunks to the next box.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the data chunks are originally prepared in a server, the data chunks representing at least a portion of one of segments that further represent data for a title.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein data in each of the segments is non-consecutive in a sense that all segments must be streamed in at substantially same time and then multiplexed to reassemble the data for the title before the title can be successfully played back.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the data for the title is encrypted or the segments are respectively encrypted before being represented in the data chunks.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the data chunks are data encrypted with a key agreeable with at least one of seeding boxes designated to propagate the data chunks.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the determining of the next box to receive data chunks after the data chunks are received comprises:

receiving the data chunks from the one of seeding boxes; and

locally caching the data chunks if the data chunks are not to be propagated to other boxes.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

causing the next box to propagate the data chunks to a set of boxes, wherein each of the set of the boxes is caused to recursively propagate its received data chunks to other boxes chosen to continue spreading, if necessary, some or all of the received data chunks among boxes in service till each of the boxes has received a designated portion of the data chunks.

8. A method of seeding media content, the method comprising:

preparing data chunks that collectively represent a plurality of data segments representing data for a title, wherein each of the data segments is non-consecutive in sequence, and actual data from the data segments must be available substantially at the same time so that the data for the title can be recovered by multiplexing the actual data from the data segments;

determining a next box to receive data chunks after the data chunks are received,

decrypting the data chunks and re-encrypting the data chunks with a key agreeable with the next box; and

causing to release the data chunks to the next box.

9. A system for seeding media content, the system comprising:

a server configured to prepare data chunks that represent at least a portion of one segments pertaining to data for a title, wherein the data chunks are encrypted with a key agreeable with one of seeding boxes configured to receive the data chunks; and

a plurality of boxes in service, a small number of the boxes designated to be the seeding boxes, the one of the boxes decrypting the data chunks upon receiving the data chunks from the server, and re-encrypting the data chunks with a key agreeable with a next box configured to receive the data chunks.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein data in each of the segments is non-consecutive in a sense that all segments must be streamed in at substantially same time and then multiplexed to reassemble the data for the title before the title can be successfully played back.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the data for the title is encrypted or the segments are respectively encrypted before being represented in the data chunks.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the next box is configured to propagate the data chunks to a set of boxes, each of the set of the boxes is caused to recursively propagate its received data chunks to other boxes chosen to continue spreading, if necessary, some or all of the received data chunks among boxes in service till each of the boxes has received a designated portion of the data chunks.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the data chunks collected in an unauthorized box would not be decrypted without an agreeable key from a previous box.

14. The system of claim 9, wherein one of the boxes needs to retrieve some or all of the segments as streaming from other designated box in order to play back the title.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the one of the boxes is configured to multiplex the segments to reassemble the data for the title.