Method and system for subscription digital rights management

Abstract

A system and method for managing use of items having usage rights associated therewith. The system includes an activation device adapted to issue a software package having a public and private key pair, the public key being associated with a user, a license device adapted to issue a license, a usage device adapted to receive the software package, receive the license and allow the user to access the item in accordance with the license, and a subscription managing device adapted to maintain a subscription list including the public key associated with the user. License's is issued by the license device upon verifying presence of the public key in the subscription list corresponding to requested content.

Description

RELATED APPLICATION DATA [0001] This application is a Continuation of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 162,698 filed on Jun. 6, 2002, which is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 867,747 filed on May 31, 2001, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,876,984, and which claims benefit from U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60 / 296,114 filed on Jun. 7, 2001, the entire disclosures of all of which are hereby incorporate by reference herein.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] 1. Field of the Invention [0003] The present invention is directed to a subscription digital rights management system and a method thereof. In particular, the present invention is directed to such a system and method that facilitates subscription to plural protected items, such as digital content. [0004] 2. Description of Related Art [0005] One of the most important issues impeding the widespread distribution of digital works (i.e. documents or other content in forms readable by computer...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0012] A first aspect of the invention is a DRM system for distributing items having usage rights associated therewith in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention comprising an activation device adapted to issue a software package that enforces usage rights to control use of the items, the software package having a public and private key pair, the public key being associated with a user, a license device adapted to issue a license having usage rights associated with at least one item, a usage device adapted to receive the software package, receive the license associated with the at least one item, and allow the user to access the at least one item in accordance with the license, and a subscription managing device adapted to maintain a subscription list including the public key associated with the user, where the license

Problems solved by technology

One of the most important issues impeding the widespread distribution of digital works (i.e. documents or other content in forms readable by computers), via electronic means, and the Internet in particular, is the current lack of ability to enforce the intellectual property rights of content owners during the distribution and use of digital works.

There are a number of issues to be considered in effecting a DRM System.

While the low quality of copying and the high cost of distributing printed material have served as deterrents to unauthorized copying of most printed documents, it is far too easy to copy, modify, and redistribute unprotected digital works with high quality.

Unfortunately, it has been widely recognized that it is difficult to prevent, or even deter, people from making unauthorized copies of electronic works within current general-purpose computing and communications systems such as personal computers, workstations, and other devices connected over communications networks, such as local area networks (LANs), intranets, and the Internet.

Many attempts to provide hardware-based solutions to prevent unauthorized copying have proven to be unsuccessful.

Clearly, the secure container approach provides a solution to protecting the document during delivery over insecure channels, but does not provide any mechanism to prevent legitimate users from obtaining the clear document and then using and redistributing it in violation of content owners' intellectual property.

While building tamper-proof trusted systems is a real challenge to existing technologies, current market trends suggest that open and untrusted systems, such as PC's and workstations using browsers to access the Web, will be the dominant systems used to access digital works.

In this sense, existing computing environments such as PC's and workstations equipped with popular operating systems (e.g., Windows™, Linux™, and UNIX) and rendering applications, such as browsers, are not trusted systems and cannot be made trusted without significantly altering their architectures.

Of course, alteration of the architecture defeats a primary purpose of the Web, i.e. flexibility and compatibility.

In this regard, conventional DRM systems can become very cumbersome when a user expects to access a large number of items of protected content since a transaction must be made for each item accessed.

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