Secure distribution of media data

摘要

A technique for distributing media data in a secured fashion that mitigates unwanted or illegal copying/distribution of such data. An initial, degraded version of the media data is sent to one or more recipient(s). After confirming identity of a recipient at a receiving system, a supplemental version of the media data is sent to the receiving system which augments the degraded version such that it can then be played by the recipient(s). The degraded version of the media data has a reduced quality that is obtained by removing portions of the data and filling in the removed portions with dummy data. During a subsequent rebuilding of the media data, a supplemental version of the media data is sent to the receiving data processing system where it is merged/combined with the degraded version to form a copy that corresponds to the original, high-quality version of the media data.

主权项

1. A method for distributing media data, comprising steps of:
removing portions of data from the media data; replacing the portions of data that are removed from the media data with dummy data to form a degraded version of the media data, where the dummy data is added to the media data at locations within the media data where the portions of data were removed from the media data; sending, by a sending data processing system, the degraded version of the media data to a recipient; and after sending the degraded version of the media data to the recipient and responsive to confirming an identity of the recipient, the sending data processing system sending a subsequent version of the media data to the recipient, wherein the subsequent version of the media data includes data portions from the media data that were removed from the media data in forming the degraded version of the media data, wherein the degraded version of the media data maintains an overall structure of the media file in a time domain; and wherein the recipient is enabled to merge the degraded version of the media data with the subsequent version of the media data to form a copy of the media data.