France Telecom

Viaccess

André Codet

Pierre Fevrier

Chantal Guionnet

Claudia Becker

Noel Fontaine

Jean-Pierre Vigarie

The invention relates to a protocol for disabling/erasing access rights to scrambled data. According to the invention, the access rights entered in an access control module comprise the following variables: right identification variable (R ID), action date variable (AD V) and right status variable (S V). The status variable can have one of three encoded values, namely enabled, disabled or erased right. The inventive protocol consists in: transmitting (A) at least one access right management message comprising the right identification variable (R ID), the action date variable (AD V) and the status assignment variable (S V), the latter corresponding to a enabled, disabled or erased right; assigning (B) the action date (AD V) of the message to the action date (AD V) of the right entered; and allocating (C) the status assignment variable (S V) of the message, corresponding to an enabled, disabled or erased access right, to the status variable (S V) of the entered access right. The invention is suitable for pay television.

Protocol for entering, disabling and/or erasing scrambled data access rights and the corresponding access control module

An apparatus and associated methodology are provided for distributing individual keys for deciphering scrambled digital data transmitted by a broadcasting system to a plurality of terminals connected to a data exchange network. The broadcasting system includes at least one portal designed to provide the individual keys, at least one scrambling platform and at least one server designed to broadcast the scrambled data. The scrambling period of the data is divided and transmitted into a succession of encoding periods CP, each defining a period of validity of an individual key Ki. A set of individual keys are supplied at each connection of a terminal to the portal. The set of individual keys includes at least one key corresponding to the encoding period CP, and at least one key corresponding to the encoding period CP+1. The terminal has also provided the date of a future connection to collect a set of deciphering keys corresponding to at least a future encoding period if the continuation of the access is authorized.

Method for distributing scrambled digital data decryption keys

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Rennes, France

André Codet