Segmented Digital Content Protection with Category-Based Access Control

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Solution Overview

Problem

Digital content distribution faces challenges in enforcing consistent access control rules, as content distributors may have different restrictions than content owners, leading to inconsistent protection schemes when distributing content from multiple owners.

Innovation Solution

The method involves segmenting digital content into protected and unprotected segments, allowing different content protection schemes to be applied to each segment based on assigned categories, with an enforcement mechanism that restricts actions on protected segments and permits actions on unprotected segments.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If the most restrictive access control rules are applied to all segments, then content owners' protection requirements are satisfied, but content distributors cannot apply less restrictive rules that they desire

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecontent protectionVSAvoidaccess control flexibility

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSAdaptability or versatility

Solution Approach 1:

The digital content is divided into multiple segments, each of which can be assigned to different categories with different content protection schemes. This allows the content distributor to apply the most restrictive protection to some segments while applying less restrictive protection to other segments, thereby satisfying both content owners' protection requirements and content distributors' operational flexibility needs.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

Different content protection schemes are applied to different segments based on their assigned categories. Instead of applying a uniform protection scheme to the entire content, the system allows local customization of protection levels for each segment, enabling the content distributor to tailor access control rules to specific portions of the content while maintaining overall system reliability.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #3Local quality

2Adaptability or versatility

If different content protection schemes are applied to different segments, then both content owners and distributors can have their preferences met, but the system complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveaccess control flexibilityVSAvoidprotection scheme management

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

By segmenting the content and assigning categories to each segment, the system manages complexity through structured organization. Each segment can be independently categorized and protected, which simplifies the management of diverse protection schemes compared to handling entire content items uniformly.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The content distributor's system is designed to handle multiple content protection schemes through a universal framework. The enforcement mechanism can interpret and apply different protection schemes across different segments, reducing the need for separate specialized systems for each protection level.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #6Universality (Multi-functionality)

Data Source

PatentUS8935796B2Segment based digital content protection

Publication Date: 2015.01.13 ZHIGU HLDG

AI summary

Techniques are disclosed herein for applying different content protection schemes to different segments of digital content. A method for protecting digital content includes determining segments within digital content that is organized to allow presentation in a certain order. Each of the segments is assigned to a category of a group of categories. Each of the categories has a different content protection scheme associated therewith. One of the protection schemes is applied to each segment based on the category associated with the segment.