Abstract:
A method of distributing electronic content such as music or books via the internet involves transmitting licence data with the content. The licence data includes status information indicative of whether the licence is a full licence for content purchased from a content distributor, or temporary for content passed from a fill licence owner to a new consumer who has not yet paid for the content. Content is transmitted from one consumer to another for example by PDA wireless transmission, with appropriate licence status data. Connection of a PDA on which content having only temporary licence status is stored to the internet automatically activates the content management program on the PDA to connect to the content distributor and transmit all stored licence status information. Detection of temporary licences by the content distributor triggers a request for payment of the content, and payment results in transmission of replacement licence data having a full licence status back to the consumer. Upon receipt of payment a reward is sent from the distributor to the person who transmitted the content (thus creating the temporary licence) to another consumer, as a kind of sale commission.

Description:
BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION  
         [0001]    1. Field of the Invention  
           [0002]    The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for distributing electronic content, such as electronically stored music or literary works, for example.  
           [0003]    The commercial distribution of such content traditionally takes place through retail outlets, such as record or book shops in the case of music or reading material. Commercial distribution of electronic content over an information technology network has many advantages, but has not yet been widely adopted by creators and commercial distributors of such content largely because of fears relating to the resultant increase in potential ease with which such content may be illicitly reproduced, sold and distributed by third parties. For this reason, significant effort has been directed toward the development of technological safeguards which prevent unauthorised copying of electronic content. Traditionally however, it has been found that any technological measure which prevents unauthorised copying is ultimately defeatable by people who wish to produce pirate copies, meaning that new technological safeguards must continually be developed and introduced.  
           [0004]    2. Description of Related Art  
           [0005]    One existing example of the distribution of content via an information technology network is Electronic Book Exchange (EBX), in which a licence or “voucher” is bound to the content of a book, with the terms of the voucher dictating the manner in which the content may be consumed.  
         SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
         [0006]    The present invention provides an alternative approach to dealing with the issue of unauthorised copying of electronic content by members of the public. One aspect of the present invention lies in an appreciation that unauthorised copying of electronic content may, broadly speaking, be put into two categories: large-scale reproduction of content, by a relatively small number of people and/or organisations for commercial purposes; and the small-scale reproduction of content by a large number of individuals for private consumption. The former activity is typically performed by organised crime for commercial motives, and is therefore unlikely to be prevented by the continual production of increasingly complex technological measures, whereas the latter is frequently an activity motivated by a desire to save money, or the desire to share content with members of the same peer group. A consequence of the motives for private copying is that with appropriate incentives, people can be persuaded to acquire legal copies. One extreme example of this would be if such copies were available free of charge; people would naturally prefer to own a genuine copy of a record by one of their favourite artists than an illicit copy. While this latter example is not a commercially viable proposition, it illustrates that if appropriate incentives can be found, which nonetheless remunerate the owner of the copyright in the content, private illicit copying can largely be eradicated without having to resort to a solution based upon the continual development of technological barriers to prevent copying (and the expense associated with such a strategy).  
           [0007]    Accordingly, a first aspect of the present invention provides a method of distributing electronic content comprising the steps of:  
           [0008]    selling to a first consumer a first copy of the content, and attaching to the first copy first licence data, including status data indicative of the legitimate nature of the first copy;  
           [0009]    copying the first copy to produce a second copy of the content, attaching to the second copy second licence data, including status data indicative of temporary legitimacy of the second copy, and transmitting the second copy and attached licence data to a second consumer;  
           [0010]    sending to the commercial distributor of the content at least sufficient of the second licence data to enable identification of: (a) the content to which it relates, and (b) the status of the second copy;  
           [0011]    sending to the commercial distributor of the content payment for the second copy of the content; and  
           [0012]    subsequent to receipt of payment by the commercial distributor, sending from the commercial distributor to the second consumer replacement second licence data including at least replacement status data indicative of the legitimate nature of the second copy of the content, and updating the replacement second licence data attached to the second copy of the content.  
           [0013]    According to one preferred embodiment, transactions between the first and second consumers on the one hand, and the commercial distributor on the other take place across an information technology network such as the internet. By providing suitable identifiers and memory structure for the content sold and licences issued, the commercial distributor will be able to determine, upon receipt of temporary licence data, from which full licence holder the content originated. In the event that the temporary licence holder chooses to purchase a copy of the content (thus converting the temporary licence into a full one) the commercial distributor is then able to reward the full licence holder responsible for transmitting the content. This provides one incentive for consumers to engage in a process of lawful purchase of content, while at the same time benefiting the commercial distributor who has an ad hoc sales force at their disposal.  
           [0014]    Typically consumers will store content on personal portable storage devices, such as a personal digital assistant (“PDA”), one example of which is the PDA sold under the trademark “Jornada” by Hewlett-Packard Co.. In one preferred embodiment the commercial distributor operates a content store for each registered consumer, which acts as a form of back-up for copies of content. This provides the consumer with substantial flexibility in the way that they wish to manage their content. For example it obviates the need for them to retain continuously a copy of each piece of content they have purchased, thus providing substantial savings in memory space (e.g. in their PDA&#39;s). This is yet a further incentive for consumers to engage in lawful purchase of content.  
           [0015]    In one preferred embodiment, retrieval of content from local storage (i.e. storage owned by the consumer), and its conversion into an assimilable form is managed by a content management program. Additionally, the content management program automatically causes connection to the commercial distributor when triggered to do so by one or more predetermined events. One example of such an event is the connection of the PDA to the network, typically via a computer, whereupon the content management program dispatches all licence data to the commercial distributor for the distributor to vet for temporary licences or anomalies, such as licences with ID numbers which do not correspond in the records of the commercial distributor to the content in respect of which they have been issued. 
       
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS  
       [0016]    Embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way of example, and with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:  
         [0017]    [0017]FIG. 1 is a schematic representation of a commercial structure for the distribution of content to consumers;  
         [0018]    [0018]FIG. 2 is a schematic illustration of the architecture of the storage of a commercial distributor, and the transmission of content to a consumer;  
         [0019]    [0019]FIG. 3 is a schematic illustration of a computer and PDA adapted to manage electronic content; and  
         [0020]    FIGS.  4  to  6  are schematic illustrations of further transactions. 
     
    
     DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS  
       [0021]    Referring now to FIG. 1, in the commercial model envisaged by the present invention content, such as music, literary or dramatic works, films or other moving images, or indeed any artistic or other work whatsoever which is at some stage converted into electronic form to enable its consumption by a consumer (i.e. “electronic content”) is created by Content Providers CP 1 , to CP n . The Content Providers CP (which may vary from e.g. a recording artist of world renown to a previously unpublished author) distribute their content through a content distributor  10  (such as a record company), who in turn uses content resellers  12  (such as record shops) to sell content to a consumer  14 ; on occasions content may also be sold to consumers  14  directly by the content distributor. Generically a person (whether natural or legal) who sells content for money or money&#39;s worth is known hereinafter as a commercial distributor, and this term is additionally intended to cover any person acting on behalf or for a commercial distributor (as are any of the other terms used in this specification in connection with parties who perform an act).  
         [0022]    Referring now to FIG. 2, a commercial distributor Y stores, manages and distributes content from a server  18 . The server  18  includes a first memory  20  in which content is stored, and each piece of content is indexed in the content store by an identifier known as a DOI, which is globally unique for a given piece of content, such that all copies of a given piece of content share the same identifier, but different pieces of content will have a different identifier. One identifier is known as a Digital Object Identifier. From the point of view of the commercial distributor Y it is desirable to keep a record of the number of copies of each piece of content that has been sold; from this the commercial distributor can keep track of which pieces of content are the most popular with their customers. To this end, the server  18  of the commercial distributor Y has a further memory called the content ledger  30 , which in the present example is simply a character or character string stored in connection with each DOI, and whose instantaneous value is representative of the number of copies of the content identified by the DOI which have been sold. In the illustrated example the content ledger  30  simply stores a number X against each DOI, where X is the number of copies sold. Upon conclusion of a sale of one or more copies of a given piece of content, the processor  40  of the commercial distributor increments the number X, stored against the DOI of the content which has been sold, by the number of copies sold. It follows therefore that if commercial distributor Y is the only authorised distributor of the content, then the character string DOI n X r , representing the sale to a particular consumer of the X r th copy of the content denoted by the identifier DOI n , will be globally unique. However, in virtually all cases more than one commercial distributor offers a given piece of content, and it is thus possible that the same character string could be assigned to represent two different sales of the same piece of content by different commercial distributors (typically, though not necessarily), to different consumers. Because it is desirable to assign a globally unique identifier to each sale, a further character or character string Q is added to the identifier DOI n X r , to create a globally unique identifier DOI n X r Q, where Q is a distributor identifier distinguishing commercial distributor Y from every other commercial distributor. This unique identifier DOI n X r Q, thus not only identifies the particular purchase, but also the content which was the subject of the purchase and the distributor from whom the content was purchased; further licence states (e.g. indicative of a time-limited licence, or licences that prevent sharing with peers may be provided).  
         [0023]    The identifier DOI n X r Q is used in a third element of the memory architecture of server  18 , known as the user licence directory  50 , which is a record of each user registered with the commercial distributor Y, and for each such user, a record of all content sold (and therefore licences granted) to that user. As can be seen from FIG. 2, users are represented in the licence directory by a user identifier UID, against which a list of identifiers having the form DOIXQ are stored. Thus for example the user UID A  has purchased pieces of content for which licences identified by DOI 1 X 2 Q/F to DOI n X r Q/F have been granted, while user UID B  has purchased a piece of content for which a licence identified by DOI 1 X 4 /F has been granted. The final character F is a licence status indicator, and indicates that the licences are full licences as opposed to temporary ones, denoted by the character T.  
         [0024]    Sale of a piece of content, e.g. the content denoted by the DOI “DOI 2 ”, which in the present example is a song by the artist Johnny Cash, takes place as follows. Once the commercial distributor Y has received either payment, or an undertaking to pay (e.g. the submission of credit card details) for the content from a consumer A, who in the present example is already registered with commercial distributor Y and has the user identification UID A , the processor  40  retrieves a copy of the content from the content store  20 . This action automatically causes an incrementation of the number X stored in the content ledger  30  against DOI 2 ; in the present example a single copy of DOI 2  has been retrieved, and so X is incremented by one, to the value X p . The user licence directory  50  is then updated to reflect the purchase of DOI 2  by UID A , by adding a record to the directory comprising the user licence identifier DOI 2 QX p /F; the X p th copy of content DOI 2 , sold by commercial distributor Q with a full licence (F). Henceforth therefore, user licence directory  50  will enable commercial distributor Y to determine that user UID A  has purchased a copy of DOI 2 . In a further modification the user licence directory will also store the time at which the update was made.  
         [0025]    Following update of the user licence directory, the user licence identifier DOI 2 QX p /F, together with metadata  64  (in this example the title of the artist, the name of the song, and the filename of the file in the content store  20 ), and a further identifier  66  known as a hash, which together comprise the complete licence data set, are bundled into a message  70  together with content  60 . The hash provides a further security measure to ensure that the content is genuinely what it purports to be, and is an identifier such as a character string generated by processing the content itself through a known program. One analogy for the hash is the chassis number on a vehicle ostensibly identified perfectly adequately through the number or licence plate visible to all. The message  70  is then sent via the network, which in the present example is the internet, to the consumer A (whose user ID with commercial distributor Y is UID A ), who downloads the new content  60 , and licence data  62  from a desktop computer  80  to a personal digital assistant (PDA)  90 .  
         [0026]    Referring now to FIG. 3, the computer  80  is connected to the internet via a LAN card  81 , and includes a processor  82  which runs a content management program  84 . Within the computer  80 , the content management program  84  stores and retrieves content on hard disc storage  86 , and transmits content to the PDA  90  via a communication channel, e.g. a serial bus  88 . The PDA likewise includes a processor  92 , on which a further copy of the content management program  94  runs, and the processor  92  is connected to the computer via serial port  96 , and also to an addressable memory  98 . Within the PDA the content management program  94  stores and retrieves content from the addressable memory, and converts it to a form assimilable by the consumer, which in the present example (i.e. the case of music) is then sent to a loud speaker  100  within the PDA. The PDA also has a wireless output  110 , typically either Bluetooth or infra red, which enables messages to be beamed over short distances to other PDAs.  
         [0027]    While both the computer and PDA content management programs  84 ,  94  store and retrieve both content and licence data, for speed and economy of data processing content is only retrieved for consumption by a consumer, and transmitted between the computer  80  and PDA  90  when it is to be stored in memory that does not already contain a copy of the content. All other management activities are performed using the licence data, this being a relatively small amount of data. The two content management programs  84 ,  94  are adapted to synchronise their activities. Thus for example, upon connection or “docking” of the PDA to the computer, the PDA content management application  94  is adapted to retrieve all licence data stored in the memory  98  and to send this to the computer  80  via the serial port  96 . When the computer content management application  84  receives such licence data, it is adapted to perform a reconciliation operation, comparing the licence data received from the PDA with the licence data stored within the hard disc storage  86 . In the event that new licence data has been transmitted to the computer  80  from the PDA, the computer content management application  84  updates the licence data retained on the hard disc  86  by adding to the hard disc any licence data not already there, and then instructs the PDA content management program  94  to retrieve and send to the computer  80  copies of all content in respect of which new licences have been stored on the computer hard disc  86 . The computer content management program  84  is also adapted automatically to connect to the commercial distributor Y, in this example via the internet, upon docking of the PDA to the computer, and to retrieve and send to the commercial distributor all licence data currently held on the hard disc storage  86 . Preferably all management activities described above of both content management programs  84 ,  94  are invisible to the user.  
         [0028]    Referring now to FIG. 4, in accordance with the method of the present invention, content may legitimately be passed directly from one consumer to another, typically using the wireless port  110 . To transmit a copy of a piece of content to another consumer using a PDA, consumer “A” instructs the content management program running in PDA  90 , via a graphical user interface on the screen  90 S of the PDA to beam a copy of a specified piece of content. Upon receipt of this instruction, the content management application running in the PDA  90  retrieves a copy of the content  160 , prepares licence data for that content, which in this case includes the licence identifier DOI 2 QX p /T (the “T” denoting a temporary licence status), metadata  202  and the hash  204  for the content, and bundles both into a message  200  which is then transmitted via the wireless port  110  to the PDA  190  of a consumer B. In the present example a copy of the content management program is already running on the PDA  190  of consumer B. However the content management application is also adapted to transmit a copy of itself to the PDA of consumer B upon instruction from consumer A, and this would occur prior to the transmission of any content.  
         [0029]    Referring now to FIG. 5, consumer B is now able to consume the content transmitted from consumer A, even though he has not paid for it. When consumer B docks his PDA  190  to the computer  180 , the content management programs in the PDA and computer perform the transmission, reconciliation and storage updating operations described above in relation to the licence data and content, causing, inter alia re-transmission of the message  200  from the PDA to the computer  180 . Docking of the PDA  190  with the computer also causes the content management program to connect via the network to the server  18  of commercial distributor Y, whereupon all the stored licence data held by the computer  180  of consumer B, including that relating to the content beamed to consumer B from consumer A, is sent to the commercial distributor, together with the user identification UID B  of consumer B. Illustrated in FIG. 5 is the transmission of message  220 , containing the licence data in respect of content acquired from user A; the further licence data which would be transmitted is omitted for the sake of clarity  
         [0030]    Upon receipt of the licence data sent by computer  180 , the server of commercial distributor Y performs a reconciliation operation, comparing the licence data received with the licence data which is held in the user licence directory  50  against user identification UID B . In the event that the licence data received from computer  180  is identical to that currently held in the user licence directory  50 , no further action is needed. If however the licence data differs there are generally two possible outcomes. In the first event the received licence data differs in that there is a licence having a full status (denoted by the status identifier “F”) of which there is no record in the user licence directory  50 , or the hash is not in agreement with DOI. In this situation the unaccounted licence is treated as a rogue licence, the consumer is sent instructions to delete the licence data and content, and then asked if they wish to purchase a genuine copy. A more common outcome of the reconciliation is that of the present example, where a licence having a temporary status T is found; in the present example the licence identifier DOI 2 QX p /T. In this event the commercial distributor saves a copy of the licence identifier in a temporary cache, and then sends an invitation to purchase a genuine copy.  
         [0031]    Referring now to FIGS. 2 and 6, if the consumer agrees, and payment is received by the commercial distributor (including an indication that payment has been dispatched, or an indication that satisfies the commercial distributor to that effect, or to the effect that an intention to pay exists), the processor of the server  18  increments the number X stored in the content ledger  30  against the DOI of the content, in this example DOI 2 , by one, and adds the new licence identifier DOI 2 QX p+1 /F, which is unique to this transaction, to the list of user licence identifiers held against the user identifier UID B  in the user licence directory  50 . The consumer B is then sent an updated licence identifier DOI 2 QX p+1 /F (the F now indicative of a full licence status) in a message  240 , which the content management programs in the computer  84  and PDA  94  then substitute for the temporary licence identifier.  
         [0032]    In the event that the consumer does not agree to pay for the content, the server then asks the consumer if they wish to delete the content from their local storage, in this case their PDA and computer. If the user agrees (for example because they do not like the music which they have received and therefore do not wish to pay for it), the server communicates with the content management programs and instructs them to delete all copies of that content and all licence data related to it. If the user does not wish to pay, and does not wish to delete the content that has not been paid for, the server  18  may for example operate to deny the user access to their personal content store (described in more detail below), and, possibly following a further warning, deletes all the content in their store, all licence identifiers in their user licence directory, and cancels their user registration.  
         [0033]    Once the transaction with consumer B is concluded, and assuming that consumer B has paid for the content, the processor  40  of the server  18  then retrieves the temporary licence identifier DOI 2 QX p /T from the cache, and searches the user licence directory  50  to find the user identifier against which the character string DOI 2 QX p  is stored (since as explained above on page 6, this character string is globally unique to a particular transaction with the commercial distributor Y). Once the user identifier UID A  (the user ID of consumer A) against which DOI 2 QX p  is stored is located, the processor then sends a message  300  to consumer A including reward points, typically redeemable against further content when sufficient points have been accumulated, and the metadata  202  of the content the consumer is being rewarded for transmitting.  
         [0034]    In a further development, the commercial distributor provides further reward to a consumer in the event that they transmit a copy of the content management program to a consumer who then registers as a user with the commercial distributor.  
         [0035]    A further incentive of registering with the commercial distributor, and therefore engaging in the lawful purchase and ownership of content is the ability to manage content in a more flexible manner as a result of having access to a personal content store held in the server by the commercial distributor on behalf of each of its users, in which all the content owned by the user is stored. This obviates the need for the user to have to store personally (including the necessity of providing back-up contingency) all content which he or she owns, so that instead the consumer may retrieve from the personal content store held by the server, those pieces of content which they require over any given time period.  
         [0036]    Content and messages containing content are typically constructed using Simple Object Access Protocol (“SOAP”), which is known per se and which will therefore not be discussed further, and transmitted using Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol, widely known as “http”.  
         [0037]    As mentioned above, references in this specification to an act performed by a party is intended to include within its scope the performance of that act by another party on behalf of the first party. References to the sending of data is intended to include where appropriate the sending of a copy of the aforementioned data. References to items of information technology capability (e.g. storage) being possessed by a person/organisation include that person or organisation having the opportunity to use such items or capability, and are not intended t denote any particular ownership status, nor any particular geographical relationship or physical proximity.  
         [0038]    The invention has been illustrated using a PDA to store content, which connects to the network via a computer. It would however be possible to use other storage, or to connect the PDA directly to the network by equipping the PDA with a LAN car, for example.