Method and System for a Hosted Digital Music Library Sharing Service
A hosted web service is provided to enable the legitimate sharing and reselling digital music among subscribers to the web service by leveraging the teachings of the first sale doctrine of copyright law. By maintaining a single copy of properly purchased song within the system that can be only accessed by one subscriber at a time, the web service preserves the rights of the copyright holder of the digital music while encouraging a community sharing.
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This application claims benefit to and is a continuation of the U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/353,662, filed on Jan. 14, 2009, which claims benefit to U.S. provisional patent application Ser. No. 61/020,956, filed on Jan. 14, 2008, both of which are herein incorporated by reference.
FIELD OF THE INVENTIONThe present invention relates generally to an architecture for a hosted digital content management service and, more specifically, techniques for sharing digital music among multiple users through a hosted digital music library service.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTIONRecent trends in digital music have seen major record labels adopting strategies to offer DRM-free digital music downloads to consumers. As of the end of 2007, all four major record labels (Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, EMI and Sony BMG) were offering their catalogs of music as DRM-free MPS downloads through Amazon's online MPS store. However, the purported “sale” of DRM-free MPS downloads has been structured as a “clickwrap” license to the MPS rather than a true sale of a single copy of that MPS (i.e., similar to the licensing structures used in the software industry). As such, terms of use in the licensing agreement offered by Amazon's MPS store only provide the purchaser the right to copy, store and transfer the purchased MPS for personal, non-commercial and entertainment use. Due, in part, to the difficulties in monitoring and policing infringing end user behavior of duplicating and proliferating perfect digital copies of a purchased DRM-free MPS downloads, actions such as redistribution, transmission, assignment, sale, broadcast, renting, sharing, lending, modifying, adapting, editing, sub-licensing are specifically prohibited in such terms.
As of the writing of this application, the legal issue of whether the purported sale of a copy of digital music can be structured as a license of the digital music (i.e., the buyer is a “licensee” rather than an owner and must be bound by any license terms) rather than a true purchase of a copy of such digital music (i.e., the buyer is an “owner” of such copy and is afforded all the legal rights and privileges as an owner) is currently being litigated in UMG Recordings Inc. v. Troy Augusto dba Roast Beast Music Collectables, Case No. 2:07-cv-3106 SJO (AJWx) (C.D. Cal). Nevertheless, to the extent the purchase of DRM-free MPS downloads is characterized as a true purchase of a copy of such an MPS, the purchaser is afforded rights certain under the “first sale doctrine”, which supports the notion that the owner of a legally-acquired copyrighted work is entitled to give or sell that copy to someone else without getting the copyright holder's permission. However, the Record Rental Amendment of 1984 created an exception to the first sale doctrine forbidding owners of copies of “phonorecords”, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, from renting, leasing, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending. In an environment where DRM-MP3 downloads are characterized as a true purchase of a copy, what is needed is an architecture for an online music service that encourages the legitimate reselling and sharing of DRM-free MP3s (afforded under the first sale doctrine and analogous to traditional used book stores and brick and mortar libraries) that does not run afoul of the Record Rental Amendment of 1984 (e.g., any sharing not done for direct or indirect commercial advantage, etc.) and prevents illegitimate and infringing copying and redistribution.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTIONThe present invention provides a web service architecture that facilitates the sharing of music among subscribers of the web service by leveraging the teachings of first sale doctrine. When the web service receives a request from a subscriber (via interaction through the web) to borrow a song that has been made available to its community of subscribers, the web service copies the digital copy of the request song from the account of the subscriber owning the digital copy into the account of the requesting subscriber. Such a copying action enables the requesting subscriber to access the digital copy of the song, either by streaming the song to the requesting subscriber's own personal computer or by enabling the requesting subscriber to copy the song onto his mobile device. Simultaneously, the web service removes the digital copy from the account of the owning subscriber which thereafter prevents the owning subscriber from accessing that digital copy.
Upon an expiration period of a borrowing period for the song or upon a recall of the digital copy by the owning subscriber, the web service returns the digital copy to the owning subscriber by copying the digital copy from the account of the borrowing subscriber back into the account of the owning subscriber thereby once again enabling access to the digital copy by the owning subscriber. Simultaneously, the web service removes the digital copy from the account of the borrowing subscriber thereby prohibiting access to the digital copy by the borrowing subscriber and preserving rights of the copyright holder to the song.
More generally, the functional components of the hosted web service are herein for facilitating this legitimate sharing of music among subscribers to the web service. As further described in the Detailed Description, such a hosted web service comprises a server comprising (i) a subscriber management platform for managing the digital media content accessible by each subscriber to the web service, (ii) a web server component for serving user interfaces to management digital media content to the subscribers, (iii) an ecommerce store for selling digital media content to subscribers, and (iv) a subscriber sharing component for facilitating the sharing of digital content among subscribers by maintaining only legitimate non-infringing copies of content within the web service for sharing purposes; and a database coupled to the server, the database containing subscriber accounts, wherein each of the subscriber accounts contains subscriber registration information, attributes information relating to digital media content accessible by the subscriber account, and digital content accessible to the subscriber account.
Those with ordinary skill in the art will recognize that technicalities of copying and removing of a digital copy of media to and from different subscriber accounts (e.g., owner and borrower accounts) as described in the foregoing summary may be governed by the operating system and the physical medium in which the digital copy and accounts reside. For example, in certain embodiments, a copy and remove may simply be accomplished through an operating system “move” primitive which adjusts source and target pointers to the memory address where the digital copy is stored on the physical medium such that the digital copy is never deleted from its original memory location.
As used hereinafter, the term and reference number “server 100” may be used generally to refer to the server side capabilities (as opposed to the client side capabilities, for example, at the mobile device 120 or end user terminal 110) and therefore may include functionality resident in the database 115 as the context requires. Those with ordinary skill in the art will also recognize that for certain embodiments, server 100 may be representative of multiple networked computers and processors that can be considered a single logical entity that provides the functionality in server 100 as described herein. Similarly, those with ordinary skill in the art will recognize that the functional components in
In addition to displaying a list of songs stored in the subscriber's own account, in certain embodiments, a subscriber is able to also view a general list of songs that have been provided by other subscribers of the service for sharing purposes.
One important aspect of the online music service taught herein is the ability for subscribers to the service to share or borrow music stored on server 100. Consistent with the first sale doctrine and similar in manner to borrowing books at a traditional brick and mortar library, the online music service taught herein enables owners of legitimately obtained copies of music to share such music amongst other subscribers. In order not to run afoul of the Record Rental Amendment of 1984, such sharing should not be done for “purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage.” Subject to certain restrictions depending upon how a subscriber loads music into database 115 (e.g., purchased through the online music service's music store or uploaded independently by the subscriber, etc.), subscribers can choose to selectively share their music with specific friends or with the community at large.
Depending upon the particular embodiment of the online music service, the owner of a song can choose to set a specific borrowing period for borrowed songs owned by him or can simply request immediate recall of the song when he desires such a song to be returned back to him. Once the borrowing period expires or the owner recalls the song at step 635, the borrowed song is returned to the owner. At step 640, if the borrower has moved a copy of the song onto his mobile device, the song is removed from the mobile device by establishing a connection with the mobile device and removing the song in step 645 (see Section E below for further details). In step 650, the song is removed from the borrower's account and restored to owner's account in step 655. From a user interface update perspective, once the song is removed from the borrower's account in step 650, it is removed from the borrower's user interface in step 660. Similarly, the song is restored in the owner's user interface at step 665 and set once again as available in the community user interface at step 670.
As described above and as shown in the particular embodiments of
Those with ordinary skill in the art will recognize that
In order to prevent copyright infringement issues, not all music that is stored in a subscriber's account in database 115 are permitted to be shared amongst the subscribers. The online music service taught herein maintains a closed structure from a song copying perspective such that illegitimate copies cannot be shared among its subscribers. So long as the online music service can verify that a subscriber has not made copies of a legitimate copy of a song, such as song can be shared within the community. However, the ability to verify that there are no illegitimate copies depends on the online music service's tracking of the origin and subsequent access to songs stored within database.
Category 1105 represents songs that are uploaded by subscribers into their accounts in the online music service (e.g., database 115). Because the online music service cannot readily verify the legitimacy of the song copy or whether multiple copies of the songs are held by the subscriber prior to uploading, these songs in this category are not sharable with other subscribers. Category 1110 represents songs that have been purchased by subscribers through the music store component 225 of the online music service itself Upon purchase, these songs are automatically placed within the account of the purchasing subscriber and the subscriber may elect to share such songs with the community. As the owner of the song, the subscriber has the right to recall the song for his own personal use at anytime thereby causing the song to be removed from a borrower's account and restored into the subscriber's own account. The owner further has a right to download such a purchased song locally to his laptop 110 to use outside of the online music service taught herein (e.g., play on a local music application such as iTunes, RealPlayer, etc.). However, if a subscriber chooses to download the song to his laptop for such further personal use outside of the online music service, the song is no longer sharable within the online music service because the online music service can no longer control proliferation of copies of the song by the subscriber outside of the online music service (i.e., such that the sharing of songs within the service would no longer preclude the subscriber's ability to retain a copy of the song outside of the system for personal use).
E. Synchronization with Mobile DevicesAs previously discussed in the context of
One exemplary embodiment that implements such a synchronization process with a cell phone as mobile device 120 utilizes a “thin client” application installed on the subscriber's cell phone 120 similar to the thin client application described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/674,081 filed Feb. 12, 2007, entitled “Method and System for a Hosted Mobile Management Service Architecture” (hereinafter “Synchronization Application”) which is hereby incorporated by reference. In such an embodiment, when the subscriber clicks on the synchronization button (see 525 in
As described in step 645 of
As discussed in the context of 230 of
While the present invention has been primarily described with music as the media that is managed by the online service implemented in server 100, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that alternative media and embodiments may be implemented without departing from the spirit and scope of the claimed invention. Other forms of digital media and data such as video, images, photos, podcasts, etc. may also be managed through a web-enabled server in accordance with the techniques described herein. Although the present invention has been described with reference to alternative embodiments, those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that changes may be made in form and detail without departing from the spirit and scope of this disclosure.
Those of ordinary skill in the art will additionally recognize that the control logic and data stored and used by the various functional components and data structures as described in the foregoing specification are merely illustrative and may be redistributed through various other logical components and data structures in alternative but functionally equivalent designs, including the removal of certain software components and/or databases, without departing from the scope or spirit of the described embodiments. Terminology used in the foregoing description is for the purpose of describing the particular versions or embodiments only, and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention which will be limited only by the appended claims. As used herein and in the appended claims, the singular forms “a,” “an,” and “the” include plural references unless the context clearly dictates otherwise. Similarly, the words “for example”, “such as”, “include,” “includes” and “including” when used herein shall be deemed in each case to be followed by the words “without limitation.” Unless defined otherwise herein, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meanings as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. All publications mentioned herein are incorporated by reference. Nothing herein is to be construed as an admission that the embodiments disclosed herein are not entitled to antedate such disclosure by virtue of prior invention. Thus, various modifications, additions and substitutions and the like can be made without departing from the spirit of the invention and these are therefore considered to be within the scope of the invention as defined in the following claims.
Claims
1. A computer-implemented method performed by a server hosting a web service for sharing digital media, the method comprising:
- storing a digital copy of media in a media storage database;
- determining whether verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made;
- categorizing the digital copy of media as shareable if the verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made;
- categorizing the digital copy of media as not shareable if the verification that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media exist can not be made;
- receiving a request at the web service to borrow, from an owner, the digital copy of media from a borrower;
- accepting the request of the borrower to borrow the digital copy of media if the digital copy of media is categorized as shareable; and
- denying the request of the borrower to borrow the digital copy of media if the digital copy of media is categorized as not shareable.
2. The computer-implemented method as set forth in claim 1, wherein:
- determining whether verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made comprises determining whether the owner of the digital copy of media purchased the digital copy of media through an ecommerce store component of the web service and determining whether the digital copy of media was downloaded through the web service by the owner.
3. The computer-implemented method as set forth in claim 1, wherein:
- determining whether verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made comprises determining whether the owner of the digital copy of media is an online music service offered through the web service.
4. The computer-implemented method as set forth in claim 1, further comprising:
- copying the digital copy of media from an account of the owner into an account of the borrower, thereby enabling access to the digital copy of media by the borrower through the web service; and
- removing the digital copy from the account of the owner, thereby prohibiting access to the digital copy by the owner.
5. The computer-implemented method as set forth in claim 4, further comprising:
- determining whether a return event for the digital copy of media has occurred;
- copying the digital copy of media from the account of the borrower into the account of the owner, thereby enabling access to the digital copy by the owner through the web service; and
- removing the digital copy of media from the account of the borrower, thereby prohibiting access to the digital copy of media by the borrower.
6. The computer-implemented method as set forth in claim 5, wherein the return event for the digital copy of media comprises one of a recall request of the digital copy of media by the owner or an expiration of a borrowing period associated with the digital copy of media.
7. The computer-implemented method as set forth in claim 4, further comprising:
- if access to the digital copy of media has been enabled for the borrower, establishing a network connection with a mobile device of the borrower; and
- downloading the digital copy of media into the mobile device.
8. The computer-implemented method as set forth in claim 5, further comprising:
- establishing a network connection with a mobile device of the borrower; and
- removing the digital copy of media from the mobile device.
9. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:
- categorizing the digital copy of media as not shareable upon downloading the digital copy of the media to the owner.
10. A hosted web service for sharing digital media content among subscribers to the web service, the service comprising:
- a server comprising (i) a web server component for serving user interfaces to manage digital media content and receiving a borrowing request to borrow a digital copy of media from a subscriber, (ii) a subscriber sharing component for determining whether verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made, for categorizing the digital copy of media as shareable if the verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made and for categorizing the digital copy of media as not shareable if the verification that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media exist can not be made; and
- a database coupled to the server, for storing a digital copy of media, the database comprising subscriber accounts, wherein each of the subscriber accounts contains subscriber registration information, attributes information relating to whether the digital media content is shareable, and digital content accessible to the subscriber account.
11. The hosted web service as set forth in claim 10, wherein the subscriber sharing component for determining whether verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made further comprises determining whether the owner of the digital copy of media purchased the digital copy of media through an ecommerce store component of the web service and determining whether the digital copy of media was downloaded through the web service by the owner.
12. The hosted web service as set forth in claim 10, wherein the subscriber sharing component for determining whether verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made comprises determining whether the owner of the digital copy of media is an online music service offered through the web service.
13. The hosted web service as set forth in claim 10, wherein the subscriber sharing component further for:
- copying the digital copy of media from an account of the owner into an account of the borrower, thereby enabling access to the digital copy of media by the borrower through the web service; and
- removing the digital copy from the account of the owner, thereby prohibiting access to the digital copy by the owner.
14. The hosted web service as set forth in claim 10, wherein the subscriber sharing component further for:
- determining whether a return event for the digital copy of media has occurred;
- copying the digital copy of media from the account of the borrower into the account of the owner, thereby enabling access to the digital copy by the owner through the web service; and
- removing the digital copy of media from the account of the borrower, thereby prohibiting access to the digital copy of media by the borrower.
15. The hosted web service as set forth in claim 10, further comprising:
- categorizing the digital copy of media as not shareable upon downloading the digital copy of the media to the owner.
16. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by a processor of a computer system, causes the processor to facilitate the sharing of digital media content among subscribers of a web service running on the computer system, by performing the steps of:
- storing a digital copy of media in a media storage database;
- determining whether verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made;
- categorizing the digital copy of media as shareable if the verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made;
- categorizing the digital copy of media as not shareable if the verification that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media exist can not be made;
- receiving a request at the web service to borrow, from an owner, the digital copy of media from a borrower;
- accepting the request of the borrower to borrow the digital copy of media if the digital copy of media is categorized as shareable; and
- denying the request of the borrower to borrow the digital copy of media if the digital copy of media is categorized as not shareable.
17. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as set forth in claim 16, wherein:
- determining whether verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made comprises determining whether the owner of the digital copy of media purchased the digital copy of media through an ecommerce store component of the web service and determining whether the digital copy of media was downloaded through the web service by the owner.
18. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as set forth in claim 16, wherein:
- determining whether verification may be made that no illegitimate copies of the digital copy of media have been made comprises determining whether the owner of the digital copy of media is an online music service offered through the web service.
19. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as set forth in claim 16, further comprising:
- copying the digital copy of media from an account of the owner into an account of the borrower, thereby enabling access to the digital copy of media by the borrower through the web service; and
- removing the digital copy from the account of the owner, thereby prohibiting access to the digital copy by the owner.
20. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium as set forth in claim 19, further comprising:
- determining whether a return event for the digital copy of media has occurred;
- copying the digital copy of media from the account of the borrower into the account of the owner, thereby enabling access to the digital copy by the owner through the web service; and
- removing the digital copy of media from the account of the borrower, thereby prohibiting access to the digital copy of media by the borrower.
Type: Application
Filed: Jul 8, 2013
Publication Date: Jun 12, 2014
Applicant: PENDRAGON WIRELESS LLC (Kirkland, WA)
Inventors: Daniel J. Lin (San Francisco, CA), Christopher K. Hess (San Francisco, CA), Eric F. Allen (San Ramon, CA)
Application Number: 13/937,068