APPLICATION OF DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT TO EMAILS BASED ON USER-SELECTED EMAIL PROPERTY SETTINGS

摘要

A method for automatically applying digital rights management (DRM) to outgoing emails based on a color category of the email set by the sending user. A plugin module on the user's computer interacts with the email application to extract the color category setting for the email and converts it to a category ID recognized by the digital rights management (RMS) server. The RMS server determines the DRM policy corresponding to the category ID using an association table, and applies that DRM policy to protect the email before sending the email to an exchange server. When a recipient receives the email, the application program on the recipient's computer cooperates with the RMS server to determine whether the recipient is allowed to access the email based on the DRM policy that has been applied to the email.

主权项

1. A digital rights management method implemented in a system including a client computer and a digital rights management server (RMS server) for protecting electronic mails (emails), comprising:
by the client computer: (a) receiving data representing an email; (b) retrieving a category setting parameter associated with the email, the category setting parameter having been specified by a user; (c) converting the category setting parameter into a category ID, by looking up a category mapping table stored on the client computer which maps a plurality of category setting parameters to a plurality of category IDs; and (d) transmitting the data representing the email along with the category ID to the RMS server; and by the RMS server: (e) determining a digital rights management (DRM) policy ID corresponding to the category ID received from the client computer, by looking up a category ID mapping table stored on the RMS server which maps a plurality of category IDs to a plurality of DRM policy IDs; (f) applying digital rights management protection to the data representing the email based on a DRM policy corresponding to the DRM policy ID, to generate a protected email document; and (g) transmitting the protected email document to an email exchange server.