Scanner Local DRM Policy Application Without Server
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing digital rights management systems for scanned documents rely on a network-connected DRM server to apply rights management policies, causing inconvenience when the server is unavailable, leading to either prevented scanning or unprotected digital documents.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a method in a scanner to store and apply digital rights management policies locally, generating unique document IDs, embedding metadata, encrypting documents, and storing policy associations locally, allowing scanning and protection without server involvement, with subsequent synchronization when the server becomes available.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the scanner relies on the DRM server to apply rights management policies, then the DRM system can properly protect digital documents, but the scanning operation is prevented when the server is unavailable
Solution Approach 1:
The scanner performs preliminary DRM protection actions by encrypting the digital document and storing policy associations locally before any server interaction is needed. This allows the scanning operation to complete successfully even when the server is unavailable, while still applying protection immediately.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a local cache storage as an intermediary between the scanner and the DRM server. This cache stores encrypted documents and policy associations locally, allowing the scanner to function autonomously when the server is unavailable, while still maintaining DRM protection through the intermediate local storage layer.
2Ease of operation
If the scanner allows scanning without applying digital rights protection when the server is unavailable, then scanning continues to work, but the digital document remains unprotected
Solution Approach 1:
The scanner applies DRM protection in advance by encrypting the digital document locally and storing the policy association in local cache before the scanning operation completes. This preliminary protection ensures that even if the server is unavailable, the document is already protected when created.
Solution Approach 2:
The scanner performs self-service DRM protection by using its local cache storage to store encrypted documents and policy associations autonomously without requiring real-time server intervention. The scanner serves its own DRM protection needs locally, maintaining both availability and protection reliability.
3Loss of information
If the scanner synchronizes all document information with the DRM server, then the server has complete document records, but network bandwidth is consumed continuously
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential document information (document ID, policy ID, encryption key) from the complete document data and synchronizes only this extracted metadata with the DRM server. This reduces network bandwidth consumption significantly while maintaining complete document information locally in the scanner's cache.
Solution Approach 2:
The scanner performs partial synchronization by uploading only the necessary document metadata to the server rather than transmitting complete document information. This partial action approach maintains document information completeness locally while minimizing network bandwidth usage during synchronization.
Data Source
AI summary
In a digital rights management system where a scanner is connected to a rights management server, the process of applying digital rights protection is performed by the scanner, rather than the server, so that scanning and document protection can be done even when the server is not available. Upon scanning a document, the operator selects a rights management policy to be applied to the digital document. The scanner generates a document ID, embeds the document ID as metadata in the document, encrypts the document, and stores the document ID, policy ID of the selected policy, and encryption key as an entry in a local document-policy association table on the scanner. The scanner uploads the above information of the digital document to the server, which stores the information in a document-policy association table on server and uses it to perform document access control.