Systems and methods for control of media access based on crowd-sourced access control data and user-attributes

摘要

Systems and methods for controlling media access based on crowd-sourced access control data and user attributes are provided. Crowd-sourced data is received from several sources in order to determine what media assets consumers are accessing, and catalog attributes of the media assets and attributes of the accessing consumers. A user-attribute-based access control function, such as a parental control feature of an interactive media guide, uses this data to control access to media assets provided by the system. When a user attempts to access a media asset, the access control function determines whether the media asset has an attribute similar to assets accessed by other users having one or more user-attributes similar to those of the accessing user. If the media asset is not sufficiently similar to assets accessed by other sufficiently-similar users, access to the media asset will be blocked unless an appropriate access code is entered.

主权项

1. A method for providing crowd-sourced media access control, the method comprising:
receiving, at a user equipment device, a request from a user to access a media asset; retrieving a media attribute associated with the media asset; determining whether access to media assets associated with the media attribute was denied for two or more users of a plurality of users; and in response to determining that access to the media assets associated with the media attribute was denied for the two or more users of the plurality of users:
retrieving an access control threshold associated with the user, wherein the access control threshold is a percentage of users for which access was denied;generating a statistical representation of a fraction of the plurality of users for which access to the media assets associated with the media attribute was denied;comparing the access control threshold to the statistical representation; anddenying access to the media asset for the user when the access control threshold matches the statistical representation.