PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To solve the problem, wherein it is impossible for an electronic content information provider to provide commercially secure and effective method, for a configurable general-purpose electronic commercial transaction/distribution control system. SOLUTION: In this system, having at least one protected processing environment for safely controlling at least one portion of decoding of digital information, a secure content distribution method comprises a process for encapsulating digital information in one or more digital containers; a process for encrypting at least a portion of digital information; a process for associating at least partially secure control information for managing interactions with encrypted digital information and/or digital container; a process for delivering one or more digital containers to a digital information user; and a process for using a protected processing environment, for safely controlling at least a portion of the decoding of the digital information. COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a423264.pdf

Systems and Methods for Secure Transaction Management and Electronic Rights Protection

A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button.

Method and system for placing a purchase order via a communications network

A method and device are provided for controlling access to data. Portions of the data are protected and rules concerning access rights to the data are determined. Access to the protected portions of the data is prevented, other than in a non-useable form; and users are provided access to the data only in accordance with the rules as enforced by a mechanism protected by tamper detection. A method is also provided for distributing data for subsequent controlled use of those data. The method includes protecting portions of the data; preventing access to the protected portions of the data other than in a non-useable form; determining rules concerning access rights to the data; protecting the rules; and providing a package including: the protected portions of the data and the protected rules. A user is provided controlled access to the distributed data only in accordance with the rules as enforced by a mechanism protected by tamper protection. A device is provided for controlling access to data having protected data portions and rules concerning access rights to the data. The device includes means for storing the rules; and means for accessing the protected data portions only in accordance with the rules, whereby user access to the protected data portions is permitted only if the rules indicate that the user is allowed to access the portions of the data.

System for controlling access and distribution of digital property

A computer implemented online music distribution system provides for the secure delivery of audio data and related media, including text and images, over a public communications network. The online music distribution system provides security through multiple layers of encryption, and the cryptographic binding of purchased audio data to each specific purchaser. The online music distribution system also provides for previewing of audio data prior to purchase. In one embodiment, the online music distribution system is a client-server system including a content manager, a delivery server, and an HTTP server, communicating with a client system including a Web browser and a media player. The content manager provides for management of media and audio content, and processing of purchase requests. The delivery server provides delivery of the purchased media data. The Web browser and HTTP server provide a communications interface over the public network between the content manager and media players. The media player provides for encryption of user personal information, and for decryption and playback of purchased media data. Security of purchased media data is enhanced in part by the use of a personal, digital passport in each media player. The digital passport contains identifying information that identifies the purchaser, along with confidential information, such as credit card number, and encryption data, such as the media player's public and private keys. The media player encryption data is used to encrypt purchased media data, which is decrypted in real time by the media player. The media player also displays confidential information, such as the purchaser's credit card number, during playback.

Secure online music distribution system

This invention relates to methods for controlling and monitoring access to network servers. In particular, the process described in the invention includes client-server sessions over the Internet. In this environment, when the user attempts to access an access-controlled file, the server subjects the request to a secondary server which determines whether the client has an authorization or valid account. Upon such verification, the user is provided with a session identification which allows the user to access to the requested file as well as any other files within the present protection domain.

Internet server access control and monitoring systems

The present invention is a method of protecting electronically published documents. It involves operating a computer system and network (9) for electronic publication of documents, including the steps of: a) receiving requests for documents from a plurality of users (117) having computers with display devices (121) or printers (123), including with the requests unique user identification for each of the plurality of users; b) authenticating the requests from the plurality of users with a copyright server (7); c) using the copyright server to direct a document server (3) to act upon proper authentication of each request; d) in response to direction from the copyright server, using a document server (7) to create uniquely encoded, compressed and encrypted documents for each authenticated request, the documents having unique encoding corresponding to each of the plurality of users, and forwarding the documents to each authenticated request user through the network (9) to corresponding agents of each authenticated request user, each of the agents being selected from display agents (111) and printer agents (113); and, e) decrypting and uncompressing the documents at each of the agents and making the documents available for use only in response to receiving correct secret keys provided by the authenticated request user to the agents. These agents are either pre-installed as software into each of the plurality of users' computers, pre-installed as hardware or firmware into user hardware selected from display devices and printers, or are software programs transmitted at the time of use.

Method of protecting electronically published materials using cryptographic protocols

One of the major challenges faced by electronic publishing is that of preventing individuals from easily copying and illegally distributing electronic documents. The authors explore the use of cryptographic protocols to discourage the distribution of illicit electronic copies, and propose an architecture and two separate strategies for making electronic document distribution secure. >

Copyright protection for electronic publishing over computer networks

In shared-memory packet switches, buffer management schemes can improve overall loss performance, as well as fairness, by regulating the sharing of memory among the different output port queues. Of the conventional schemes, static threshold (ST) is simple but does not adapt to changing traffic conditions, while pushout (PO) is highly adaptive but difficult to implement. We propose a novel scheme called dynamic threshold (DT) that combines the simplicity of ST and the adaptivity of PO. The key idea is that the maximum permissible length, for any individual queue at any instant of time, is proportional to the unused buffering in the switch. A queue whose length equals or exceeds the current threshold value may accept no more arrivals. An analysis of the DT algorithm shows that a small amount of buffer space is (intentionally) left unallocated, and that the remaining buffer space becomes equally distributed among the active output queues. We use computer simulation to compare the loss performance of DT, ST, and PO. DT control is shown to be more robust to uncertainties and changes in traffic conditions than ST control.

Dynamic queue length thresholds for shared-memory packet switches

The fairness problems suffered by distributed-queue-dual-bus (DQDB) networks that span metropolitan areas are examined in detail. The problems arise because the network control information is subject to propagation delays that are much longer than the transmission time of a data segment. A rate control procedure is proposed that requires only a minor modification of the current DQDB protocol. In order to guarantee that a node acquires only 90% of the available slots, every time it inserts nine data segments into its local queue it inserts one extra request slot into its transmission queue. This lets an extra idle slot go by that was not requested by any downstream node. >

Improving the fairness of distributed-queue-dual-bus networks

A system for queueing and selective pushout and method are disclosed for a packet communications module such as a shared memory asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switch. The shared memory stores packets in queues, each packet having a field and at most two pointers. Within each queue, the packets having respective space priorities are stored in subqueues each having the respective space priorities. The packets are stored in these priority subqueues using a first pointer pointing to the next packet of the same space priority in the queue. The second pointer associated with a stored packet points to the previous packet of greater than or equal space priority in the FIFO order in the queue. The field of a packet is used to store the priority value corresponding to the next packet in FIFO order in the queue, and this field is used by a processor to decide priority sub-queues to serve next. The packets are stored in the queues in a FIFO order using the two pointers and the fields of the packets. The processor controls the selective pushout to push out a packet and uses the two pointers and the fields of the packets to restore the FIFO order. A method is also disclosed including the steps of storing packets in a queue, with each of the queued packets associated with the two pointers and a field; serving the queue; pushing out packets from the queue; and maintaining queue-lengths and a state information table.

Abhijit K. Choudhury

Papers

Method of protecting electronically published materials using cryptographic protocols

Copyright protection for electronic publishing over computer networks

Dynamic queue length thresholds for shared-memory packet switches

Improving the fairness of distributed-queue-dual-bus networks

Implementation of selective pushout for space priorities in a shared memory asynchronous transfer mode switch