Patent Application
20180089696
Producers of media content such as videos, music, and books want to reach as large an audience as possible. A larger audience means more recognition for the content and for the creators of the content. It also may mean more money goes to those involved in creating the content. Advertisers want to reach the consumers of the content and sell them goods. They are willing to pay significant amounts of money for access to these viewers. Consumers want to get content for as little cost as possible and generally do not like the interruption of their content by advertisements such as commercials, pop-up ads, and banner ads, whether these ads are on a computer, a movie screen, a television screen, a smartphone, or a tablet.
The desires of these three different groups—viewers, producers, and sponsors—are often at odds. In recent years, technology has been developed to assist one group fulfill their desires at the expense of one or more of the other two groups. Then legal and technical means are used by one of the disadvantaged parties to defeat this new technology. One example of a technological solution is the digital video recorder (DVR) that allows a viewer of television shows to record them and automatically or manually skip commercials. While this satisfies the desires of viewers, it defeats the desires of sponsors. This technology may be a benefit to producers who want their content viewed without interruption or distraction, or it may be to the detriment of producers who want to be paid for their work and who lose revenue from sponsors whose advertisements are being skipped. In all cases, sponsors are at a disadvantage because their advertisements are not seen.
In response to the automatic commercial skipping feature of certain DVRs, some companies took legal action against DVR manufacturers and providers for copyright infringement and breach of contract. See e.g., Fox Broadcasting Co. v. Dish Network, LLC. Some DVR manufacturers and distributors reached agreements with content providers to disable the use of automatic commercial skipping features in their DVRs, although viewers could still manually skip commercials. This commercial skipping technology pushed sponsors to place advertisements at the bottom of the television screen while shows are playing—often animated people and cartoons that pop up and create an annoying distraction for the viewer.
Similar scenarios have occurred with movies in theaters that now try to maximize revenue by showing long series of ads and previews before the main feature, usually to the annoyance of moviegoers. Banner ads and pop-ups now clutter computer screens at most websites, particularly those that give access to “free” content. Smartphone apps also often include pop-up ads that sometimes cannot even be clicked away, and that block the content being viewed.
To access content without advertisements, business models like pay-TV cable networks such as HBO and Showtime and pay-audio services such as Apple iTunes allow customers to pay for advertisement-free content, but viewers tend to share the purchased content with friends or, worse, sell the content to others despite not having the rights to do so. This form of piracy denies the money to content producers that they need to continue to create content. This form of piracy also denies the money to the sponsors of the content whose advertisements are cut out entirely or remain but cannot be tracked to the viewer. Sophisticated technical solutions have been developed to encrypt media files (called digital rights management or “DRM”) so that only the party that purchased the content can access it, but computer hackers continue to develop equally sophisticated technological methods to break such encryption. This led to Congress passing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998 that created serious penalties for anyone who produces and disseminates technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent DRM measures that control access to copyrighted work. The DMCA also penalizes anyone who actually circumvents such measures.
The situation is a never-ending war on the dual battlefields of law and technology. All weapons in this war are beneficial to one or two of the three parties involved—viewers, producers, and sponsors—while detrimental to the remaining party or parties. What is needed is a solution where all parties benefit. A win-win-win for all involved. A lasting peace.
The present invention allows media content to be downloaded and accessed while the user is not connected to the Internet, yet restricts access to registered users and also tracks user viewing habits. The service that enables the invention is called a media management service.
The present invention allows the user to download a media file to a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or other network-connected device, where the media file includes but is not limited to a video file, music file, or e-book file. In one embodiment, the media file is encrypted such that the user must get the decryption key from a network-connected computer server that verifies that the user is a registered user or, if not already registered, the user is required to register at a website. The encryption key is downloaded from the network-connected computer server to the registered user's device, where it is stored and is used to decrypt the media file at any time including a time when the user is not connected to the Internet. As the user accesses the media file, information about the user's viewing habits are stored on the user's device. At a later time when the user connects to the Internet, the user's viewing habit information is uploaded to the Internet-connected computer server.
The present invention allows content to be broadcast without commercial interruption, yet lets the company or companies that sponsor the content to offer advertisements and discounts and various special offers to the viewers at a later time of their own choosing, typically on a second screen. For example, the user may watch a television show on a tablet computer while on a plane without an Internet connection, while incentives to purchase products are delivered via email to their home computer or by text message to their phone at a later time.
The present invention allows the recording of information about the user's viewing habits and delivers that information to a web server where it is saved in a database. The information in the database can be purchased by a company that desires to know the viewing habits of people in certain age groups, genders, in certain sections of the country, and/or having particular interests and hobbies so that they can determine which ones are most likely to purchase their products. Alternately the information in the database can be purchased by companies that desire to know the age groups, locations, genders, interests and hobbies of people watching particular content so that they can determine which content appeals to people who are most likely to purchase their products.
The present invention allows the viewer to access a central database at any time, which provides advertisements, coupons, discounts, contests, and other incentives to purchase products, based the viewer's information and whether the viewer watched content that was sponsored by a particular advertiser.
Sponsoring companies pay to have the content delivered over the system in order to get information about the viewers of the sponsored content and in order to send these viewers targeted incentives to purchase their products. Content providers keep a share of the money spent by the sponsors. The company maintaining the media management service also keeps a share of the money spent by the sponsors. The viewers watch content of their choosing without interruptions by commercials, pop-up ads, and banner ads. The viewers can watch content at no charge to them as long as they allow sponsors to send them incentives, typically on a second screen and/or at a later time. Because these incentives are for products that have been determined to likely be wanted or needed by the viewers, viewers will appreciate the incentives rather than find them to be an annoyance.
Another benefit of the present invention is that because viewers can obtain content at no charge, there is no incentive for piracy. Why obtain something illegally for free when you can obtain it legally for free? And the illegal version does not come with any incentives while the legal version also comes with coupons and discounts on really cool stuff.
One embodiment of the present invention is illustrated in
One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the Internet 100 may be replaced with any network including but not limited to a local area network (LAN), intranet, or wide area network (WAN) that may be wired or wireless. One of ordinary skill in the art would also recognize that Client 102 and Client 103 may be any kind of network client device including but not limited to a mobile phone, tablet computer, laptop computer, desktop computer, set top box, or any Internet-connectable appliance.
When Client 102 is connected to the Internet 100 and the user requests a media file from Media Server 101, a process connects the Client 102 to Media Server 101 to confirm that the user has registered with the media management service. This process is illustrated in
According to one embodiment of the present invention, a media file in a standard format such as MP3 or MP4 or JPEG is encrypted using a standard private key encryption method—such as Twofish, Serpent, AES (Rijndael), Blowfish, CASTS, RC4, 3DES, Skipjack, Safer+/++, or IDEA.
When the user is not connected to the Internet, the process for playing a media file on the Client 102 is shown in
One embodiment of a key table would look like this, containing the title, name, ID, and decryption key for each media file:
This local storage may be a hard disk, a solid state memory, or other nonvolatile memory. The table may be in a file or in a database. The key table contains a list of media file IDs for media files that have been downloaded by the user. Each media file ID has a corresponding encryption key that has also been downloaded. In block 301, it is determined whether the particular media file ID is found in the key table. If not, block 305 presents an error message to the user on the client. The error message may ask the user to connect to the Internet to download the file. It may also ask the user to register for the media management service if the user is not already registered.
If the media file ID is found in the key table at block 301, the corresponding decryption key is retrieved from key table at block 302. At block 303 the media file is decrypted and played on the client device using a standard media player. A decrypted copy of the media file is not stored on the client. While the media file is playing, user activity information is recorded locally at block 303 including, but not limited to, the time of day, which sections of the file are being played, the number of times the file is being played, where the user starts playing within the file, where the user pauses playing within the file, and where the user stops playing within the file.
When the Client 102 is connected to the Internet 100, the following process takes place:
At block 601 the User Activity Record in Database 405 of Media Server 101 is retrieved. In block 602, Database 405 is searched to determine which advertisers have sponsored which media files. In block 603, specific incentive messages are retrieved from the Database 405 based on retrieved User Activity Record. In block 604, the appropriate incentive message is selected based on the sponsor, the user activity, and the criteria that has been specified by the sponsor. In block 605 the selected incentive message is sent to the user to encourage the user to purchase the sponsor's product. These incentive may be sent to Client 102 or Client 103 or any other device belonging to the user that is connected to the Internet 100.
It is to be understood that the above description is intended to be illustrative, and not restrictive. Many other embodiments will be apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading and understanding the above description. Although the present invention has been described with reference to specific exemplary embodiments, it will be recognized that the invention is not limited to the embodiments described, but can be practiced with modification and alteration within the spirit and scope of the appended claims. Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative sense rather than a restrictive sense. The scope of the invention should, therefore, be determined with reference to the appended claims, along with the full scope of equivalents to which such claims are entitled.
This is a continuation/divisional patent application drawing priority from U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/634,728; filed Feb. 28, 2015. This present patent application draws priority from the referenced patent application. The entire disclosure of the referenced patent application is considered part of the disclosure of the present application and is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 14634728 | Feb 2015 | US |
| Child | 15809492 | US |
