International Business Machines Corporation

National University Corporation Asahikawa Medical University

Hiroya Kobayashi

Norishige Morimoto

Kunihiko Miwa

Takayuki Ohkuri

Akemi Kosaka

In providing a system that can manage access to data to effectively prevent illegal access to the data or the like, there is provided a system for embedding access management information that prepares management information for managing access to the data, and embeds the management information in the data through data transformation without changing amount of data. In managing access to data, there is provided a method that extracts management information embedded in the data through data deformation without changing amount of data, and manages access to the data according to the extracted management information. There is also provided a method for changing management of access to the data according to the type of medium in which the data is stored (RAM or ROM). The management information further contains information for controlling recording of the data, reception of the data, playback of the data, interference of output of the data, duplication history of the data, or modification of the management information. The access management method can prevent illegal duplication of data or the like, and can effectively protect a work.

Method and system for managing access to data through data transformation

Management information is embedded by directly controlling media with a date hiding technique. A system which accesses (regenerates or records) media data by using the management information is controlled based on this management information, and according to the contents of the management information, the access to media data is inhibited. Therefore, illegal duplication of data can be prevented, and consequently, works can be effectively protected. More particularly, in a system for accessing media data stored on a storage medium 51, the system comprises means 52 for reading out data from the storage medium, means 56 for specifying an embedding region, in which management information for managing access to the media data was embedded, from the read-out data and for extracting the management information in accordance with a status of the embedding region by referring to an extraction rule where the status of the embedding region is caused to correspond to the contents of data to be extracted, means 60 for generating an access interference signal, and means 59 for selectively outputting either the read-out signal or a signal generated by both the read-out signal and the access interference signal, in accordance with the contents of the management information.

Growing community of inventors

Machida, Japan

Hiroya Kobayashi