Systems and methods for preventing unauthorized use of digital content

Abstract

Theft, distribution, and piracy of digital content (software, video, audio, e-books, any content of any kind that is digitally stored and distributed) is generally accomplished by copying it, if possible, or, if it is protected from being copied in any fashion, such piracy is based upon a number of reverse engineering techniques. Aside from the straightforward copying of unprotected content, all of these other methods require first an understanding of the protective mechanism(s) guarding the content, and finally an unauthorized modification of that protection in order to disable or subvert it. Methods that prevent a skilled individual from using reverse engineering tools and techniques to attain that level of understanding and / or prevent anyone from performing such modifications can offer significant advantages to content creators who wish to protect their products.

Description

RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is a divisional application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 989,910, filed Nov. 20, 2001, which application is a continuation-in-part application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 960,610, filed Sep. 21, 2001, which application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 234,657, filed Sep. 22, 2000, U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 240,611, filed Oct. 16, 2000, U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 242,949, filed Oct. 24, 2000, and U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 244,704, filed Oct. 31, 2000. [0002] U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 989,910 also claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 249,946, filed Nov. 20, 2000, U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 260,705, filed Jan. 10, 2001, and U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60 / 285,300, filed Apr. 20, 2001. [0003] The contents of the applications referenced above are incorporated herein by reference, in their ent...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015] In another aspect of the present invention, digital content (whether or not it is also hidden and / or encrypted) is modified such that it is tokenized or otherwise obfuscated, and then when it comes time for the content to be used, it is interpreted within a custom interpreter that is a part of the system. An example of such is to modify a compiler such that the assembly language output is nonstandard, and thus require that the execution occur in an interpreter designed for the task. Such construction is possible even using decades-old utilities such as LEXX and YaCC, traditionally compiler creation tools. Such an interpreter is composed of a parser which consumes tokens, converts the tokenized logic to native computing instructions, obfuscates these instructions with anti-disassembly logic, and feeds them to the standard system interfaces. Such interposition of execution layers makes debugging a nontrivial task, and the anti-disassembly logic eliminates the use of many popular disassembly tools

[0059] In another aspect, source, object, or executable code is processed to generate variant different versions of executable code, by means of replacement of content with functionally synonymous content. For example in the case of executable content, different assembly language instructions and ordering, that produce the same functional outcome are generated, such that no two such versions share the same fingerprint or the same code-line-number relationship per instruction. This variation is designed to reduce or eliminate the broadly disseminated effectiveness of hacker tutorials and documents that usually depend on specific line-number directions.

Problems solved by technology

The electronic publishing industry for application software, computer games, appliance-console games, movies, and music, is facing a growing and serious problem; namely, the piracy and unauthorized modification and use of their content.

Since digital content is by nature capable of being copied exactly, wherein a copy is identical in every way to the original, and since the tools to do so are increasingly available, the industry is facing increasing losses.

Such losses may include the unauthorized copying of a CD containing a game, or the unauthorized reverse engineering and modification of a word processing program to allow for its illegal distribution, or the reverse engineering of a copy protection scheme to disable it, making it possible to make duplicates with ease.

Most protections are simplistic in nature, and depend to large degree on the secrecy of the simple method as much as its inherent security or ingenuity, such that if not defeated prior to publication, the act of publishing them, for example in patent form, reveals enough about them to render them less effective.

Many of these mechanisms depend to a great extent on lack of knowledge about the mechanisms by the persons attempting to modify or copy the content.

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