US 7,484,103 B2Granted

Method and system for the information protection of digital content

OwnerJe-Hak Woo, Hwan-Chul Lee +5inventors

InventorsJe-Hak Woo, Hwan-Chul Lee, Sang-Young Cho, Seong-Ho Jeong, Young-Soo Ha, Seog-Kyoon Shin, Seong-Il Kim

Life of this patent

Estimating the term…

Loading patent…

Abstract

The present invention relates to the information protection of digital content transferred by streaming and download service through wire or wireless Internet network. The information protection system in this invention suggests a drastic prevention method of copyrights infringement such as illegal copy and unauthorized distribution of digital content, by using of the encryption, decryption, distribution, and authentication technologies. This invention suggests the control technology of general viewer program, not the specific viewer program for information protection, using a network filter driver for streaming and file system filter driver for download service. The main function of network and file system filter driver is the filtering operation such as a hooking, changing, decrypting, and restoring of message and data packet, and transferring to the viewer program. The main idea and technology of this invention suggest higher secure and efficient digital information protection system for live/VOD/HTTP streaming and download service.

Claims30

Dependent claims

A multimedia contents protecting system for preventing multimedia contents, which are sent to an application program running on a client system, from leaking without permission through the use of an information providing system and the client system, the information providing system and the client system each having a Central Processing Unit (CPU), a volatile storage (memory), a non-volatile storage (hard disk) and an input/output device (keyboard, monitor, etc.), and being connected to each other through wired or wireless internal communication means or means for communicating with an external network, comprising:

the information providing system comprising,
encryption means (110) for encrypting original contents using one or more encryption keys and generating an encrypted contents package (121),
provision means (120) for holding the encrypted contents package (121) and providing the encrypted contents package (121) to users on line, and
a Digital Rights Management (DRM) server (130) for managing generation of the encryption keys and performing various authentication operations;
and
the client system comprising,
filtering means located between an application program (144) on a higher layer and a device driver on a lower layer for repeating a process of hooking data packet of the encrypted contents package (121) with messages between the application program and the device driver, converting the data packet to a format corresponding to decryption, decrypting the encrypted data packet using one or more decryption keys, and sending the decrypted data packet to the application program,
control means for starting and terminating the application program and controlling the filtering means, and
an application program (144) for receiving the contents from the filtering means and playing the contents.

6 more elements

A multimedia contents protecting method of preventing multimedia contents, which are sent to an application program running on a client system, from leaking without permission through the use of an information providing system and the client system, the information providing system and the client system each having a CPU, a volatile storage (memory), a non-volatile storage (hard disk) and an input/output device (keyboard, monitor, etc.), and being connected to each other through wired or wireless internal communication means or means for communicating with an external network, comprising:

an encrypting and uploading step of an encrypted contents package (121) converted from an original contents (111) using encryption keys being uploaded to the information providing system through the communication means;
an initiating and connecting step of the client system being connected to the information providing system to initiate streaming or downloading service by selection of encrypted contents package (121) in the information providing system using the input device of the client system;
a decrypting and playing step of the client system making the encrypted data played through the output device by the application program (144), by a filtering operation repeating a process of hooking data packet of the encrypted contents package (121) with messages between the application program (144) on a higher layer and the device driver on a lower layer, converting the data packet to a format corresponding to decryption, decrypting the encrypted data packet using one or more decryption keys, and sending the decrypted data packet to the application program, during transferring in the case of a streaming manner, or in response to a play signal after downloading in the case of a downloading manner;
and
a terminating step of the client system terminating the operation of the application program (144) and the filtering operation and disconnecting connection to the information providing system in the case of a streaming manner, when a termination command of the application program (144) is detected.

2 more elements

A computer-readable storage medium for storing a computer-executable multimedia contents protecting method of preventing multimedia contents, which are sent to an application program running on a client system, from leaking without permission through the use of an information providing system and the client system, the information providing system and the client system each having a CPU, a volatile storage (memory), a non-volatile storage (hard disk) and an input/output device (keyboard, monitor, etc.), and being connected to each other through wired or wireless internal communication means or means for communicating with an external network, the multimedia contents protecting method comprising:

an encrypting and uploading step of an encrypted contents package (121) converted from an original contents (111) using encryption keys being uploaded to the information providing system through the communication means;
an initiating and connecting step of the client system being connected to the information providing system to initiate streaming or downloading service by selection of encrypted contents package (121) in the information providing system using the input device of the client system;
a decrypting and playing step of the client system making the encrypted data played through the output device by the application program (144), by a filtering operation repeating a process of hooking data packet of the encrypted contents package (121) with messages between the application program (144) on a higher layer and the device driver on a lower layer, converting the data packet to a format corresponding to decryption, decrypting the encrypted data packet using one or more decryption keys, and sending the decrypted data packet to the application program, during transferring in the case of a streaming manner, or in response to a play signal after downloading in the case of a downloading manner;
and
a terminating step of the client system terminating the operation of the application program (144) and the filtering operation and disconnecting connection to the information providing system in the case of a streaming manner, when a termination command of the application program (144) is detected.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.