Intertrust Technologies Corporation

Sony Corporation

Sony Electronics Inc

John P Hwa

Ralph D Hill

Talal G Shamoon

Chris D Radcliffe

David M Van Wie

W Olin Sibert

Eric J Swenson

Motomasa Futagami

Pierre Chavanne

Carl E Quinn

Lakshmana Pamarthy

Atsushi Mituszawa

A novel method and apparatus for protection of streamed media content is disclosed. In one aspect, the apparatus includes control means for governance of content streams or content objects, decryption means for decrypting content streams or content objects under control of the control means, and feedback means for tracking actual use of content streams or content objects. The control means may operate in accordance with rules received as part of the streamed content, or through a side-band channel. The rules may specify allowed uses of the content, including whether or not the content can be copied or transferred, and whether and under what circumstances received content may be 'checked out' of one device and used in a second device. The rules may also include or specify budgets, and a requirement that audit information be collected and/or transmitted to an external server. In a different aspect, the apparatus may include a media player designed to call plugins to assist in rendering content. A 'trust plugin' is disclosed, along with a method of using the trust plugin so that a media player designed for use with unprotected content may render protected content without the necessity of requiring any changes to the media player. In one aspect, the streamed content may be in a number of different formats, including MPEG-4, MP3, and the RMFF format.

Methods and apparatus for persistent control and protection of content

A novel method and apparatus for protection of streamed media content is disclosed. In one aspect, the apparatus includes control means for governance of content streams or content objects, decryption means for decrypting content streams or content objects under control of the control means, and feedback means for tracking actual use of content streams or content objects. The control means may operate in accordance with rules received as part of the streamed content, or through a side-band channel. The rules may specify allowed uses of the content, including whether or not the content can be copied or transferred, and whether and under what circumstances received content may be 'checked-out' of one device and used in a second device. The rules may also include or specify budgets, and a requirement that audit information be collected and/or transmitted to an external server. In a different aspect, the apparatus may include a media player designed to call plugins to assist in rendering content. A 'trust plugin' is disclosed, along with a method of using the trust plugin so that a media player designed for use with unprotected content may render protected content without the necessity of requiring any changes to the media player. In one aspect, the streamed content may be in a number of different formats, including MPEG-4, MP3, and the RMFF format.

Systems and methods for protection of streamed media content are disclosed. In one aspect, the system includes control means for governing content streams or objects, decryption means for decrypting content streams or objects, and feedback means for tracking use of content streams or objects. The control means may operate in accordance with rules received in the streamed content or through a side-band channel. The rules may specify allowed uses of the content, including whether the content can be copied or transferred, and whether content may be 'checked out' of one device and used in another. The rules may also include budgets, and a requirement that audit information be collected and/or transmitted to server. In another aspect, a media player is disclosed that uses plugins to assist in rendering content. A 'trust plugin' is used to enable a media player designed to render unprotected content to render protected content.

Protection of digital content using a specific application of block cipher cryptography is described. The digital content is encrypted using an encryption key and a calculated initialization vector. The digital content includes a plurality of strides of data and each stride includes a string of data to be encrypted and a block of data to be encrypted. The calculated initialization vector to be used to encrypt the block of data is derived from the string of data in the stride to be encrypted. Furthermore, the initialization vector is calculated by performing an exclusive disjunction function on a seed value and the string of data for each stride.

Protection of digital content using block cipher crytography

Growing community of inventors

Fremont, CA, United States of America

John P Hwa