Patent ID: 7715557

Claim:
A method for managing rights of subscribers to a pay-television system comprising an access control system to which are connected subscriber management systems each managed by an operator and a plurality of subscriber decoders, said decoders each being equipped with a security module containing the rights for each subscriber allowing the decryption of encrypted digital data of a stream broadcasted by at least one operator, during a modification of the rights carried out by an operator in the security module of a subscriber, the method comprising: receiving, by the access control system, data identifying a subscriber with commands for modifying the rights in the security module of the subscriber's decoder, the data being sent by a subscriber management system of an operator; verifying, by a filtering module connected to the access control system, the rights' modifications according to security module resources including available storage capacity depending on format and structure of the stored rights data and rights data to be stored; when the rights modifications are acceptable by the security module, generating a management message containing the modified rights; transmitting said management message to the security module of the subscriber's decoder via the broadcasted stream containing the encrypted digital data; and if the verification of the rights modifications fails, transmitting by the subscriber management system a warning message to the subscriber, said message proposing a new configuration of the rights to said subscriber by deletion and/or replacement of the superfluous rights stored in the security module.