Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Business processing using cryptography – Usage protection of distributed data files
Reexamination Certificate
2000-03-03
2004-08-03
Trammell, James P. (Department: 3621)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Business processing using cryptography
Usage protection of distributed data files
C705S059000, C705S051000, C705S058000, C713S160000, C380S201000, C380S203000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06772133
ABSTRACT:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION
This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 11-058890, filed Mar. 5, 1999, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to devices for recording and reproducing the contents, including images, voice data and the like.
The digital contents reproduction devices including a CD player are popularly accepted because of clear tone quality and less degradation of tone quality caused by long-term use. However, it has become possible to copy digital contents free of degradation by faithfully duplicating it bit by bit, and in actuality such devices have already been commercialized. The presence of such copying device is a great advantage to the contents user, but for the contents provider, it is not desirable because such device exerts tremendous influence on the sales of contents.
Consequently, the contents provider copes with new digital devices (and media) when they are commercialized by not providing them with the contents. However, this condition causes big interference to popularization of new electronic devices, and prevents not only almost all people from enjoying the convenience but also contents providers from enjoying business chances.
On the other hand, the privately copied contents for the user to enjoy the contents personally is the right authorized by the Copyright Law, and in actuality, for many electronic devices, the privately copied contents has been admitted with some restriction to the duplication system (restriction to the analog recording, etc.). However, when digital recording becomes the mainstream in years to come, it becomes difficult to determine the privately copied contents from officially copied contents, and at the same time, it becomes difficult to determine whether the copy is the privately copied contents or the authorized copied contents.
By the way, in this invention, the privately copied contents means the copy for local use and carried out by the person who has no dealership of the relevant source (digital contents), while the officially copied contents means the copy for global use and carried out by the person who has the dealership to the relevant source. That is, the officially copied contents are only able to be acquired by the means equivalent to the conventional contents sales, which include the sales from an electronic shopping mall on the Internet.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an information reproduction device, an information recording device, and information selling device, and an information purchasing device, and an automatic information vending machine, which can increase demands for officially copied contents on the official market and build up the information distribution mechanism suited for interest of the contents provider, contents user, and electronic device manufacturer by changing over the reproduction system of the relevant contents by determining whether the contents are the officially copied contents or privately copied contents, and permitting more advantageous utilization form for the officially copied contents than for the privately copied contents.
According to the present invention, in order to solve the above-mentioned problems, by controlling the use of contents by license information corresponding to the contents and at the same time, pasting a digital signature to the license information corresponding to the encrypted contents, which is the officially copied contents, with a secret key of an public key cryptosystem which the contents selling server only knows, the officially copied contents and privately copied contents are determined by the presence of the digital signature, and the reproduction system of the contents are varied based on the judgment results.
The information reproduction device according to the present invention reproduces the contents information based on the license information required for reproducing the contents information added to the contents information and comprises a determining section configured to determine whether the encrypted contents information is officially copied contents information or privately copied contents information and a reproduction section for reproducing the contents information determined as the privately copied contents information with restrictions much severer than for the officially copied contents information.
It may be determined whether the contents are the officially copied contents information or privately copied contents information based on the verification information for verifying the officially copied contents contained in the license information.
The utilization condition of the contents information contained in the license information is more restricted for the privately copied contents information than for the officially copied contents information.
The license information added to the contents information may be encrypted or decrypted by the key information prepared based on the information dependent on the identifier of the recording medium in which the contents information is recorded.
The judging section may determine whether the contents information is the original contents pursuant to the contents of the license information, and if it is determined to be the original contents information, the second reproduction section for reproducing the contents information without restriction may be further included.
According to the information reproduction device of the present invention, a structural difference is provided in the reproduction system of privately copied contents as well as officially copied contents and original contents, and expansion of the personal use is prevented with privately copied contents admitted, thereby protecting the copyright and contents providers. In addition, if the contents are unjustly transferred to a separate recording medium, that is, copied, since the license information is dependent on the recording medium, the license information is unable to be decrypted from the illegal copying medium, and as a result, the contents are unable to be decrypted. Therefore, whether it is privately copied contents or officially copied contents, the license information must be remade for the copy, and because it is the just recording device that can do it (for example, that knows the function “f”), restriction to number of copies is accurately carried out, and unjust use of the contents are able to be prevented.
A first information recording device according to the present invention is an information recording device for recording the contents information (may be encrypted and may not be encrypted) and the license information (may include a decrypting key for the encrypted contents information) required for reproducing the contents information and added to the contents information, the information recording device comprising a determining section for determining the type of input contents information, a generating section for generating the license information based on the type determined by the determining section, the information dependent on the identifier of the recording medium, and a recording section for recording the contents information to the recording medium together with the license information generated by the creation section. The license generating section may generate the license information based on the utilization condition of contents information in addition to the type determined by the determining section and the information dependent on the identifier of recording medium.
The contents information to be input may be restricted to analog signals.
According to the first information recording device according to the present invention, discriminating the type of contents and providing the environment in which duplication is allowed only by the severe restrictions than the source contents differentiate the privately copied contents from the officially copied cont
Akiyama Koichiro
Handa Yutaka
Kambayashi Toru
Ohmori Yoshihiro
Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
Trammell James P.
Worjloh Jalatee
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