Abstract: The present invention provides systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection. Electronic appliances such as computers equipped in accordance with the present invention help to ensure that information is accessed and used only in authorized ways, and maintain the integrity, availability, and/or confidentiality of the information. Such electronic appliances provide a distributed virtual distribution environment (VDE) that may enforce a secure chain of handling and control, for example, to control and/or meter or otherwise monitor use of electronically stored or disseminated information. Such a virtual distribution environment may be used to protect rights of various participants in electronic commerce and other electronic or electronic-facilitated transactions. Distributed and other operating systems, environments and architectures, such as, for example, those using tamper-resistant hardware-based processors, may establish security at each node.

Abstract: An integrated, modular array of administrative and support services are provided for electronic commerce and electronic rights and transaction management. These administrative and support services supply a secure foundation for conducting transaction-related capabilities functioning over electronic networks can also be adapted to the specific needs of electronic commerce value chains. In one embodiment, a Distributed Commerce Utility having a secure, programmable, distributed architecture provides administrative and support services. The Distributed Commerce Utility may comprise a number of Commerce Utility Systems. These Commerce Utility Systems provide a web of infrastructure support available to, and reusable by, the entire electronic community and/or many of its participants. Different support functions can be collected together in hierarchical and/or networked relationships to suit various business models or other objectives.

Abstract: The present invention provides systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection. Electronic appliances such as computers equipped in accordance with the present invention help to ensure that information is accessed and used only in authorized ways, and maintain the integrity, availability, and/or confidentiality of the information. Such electronic appliances provide a distributed virtual distribution environment (VDE) that may enforce a secure chain of handling and control, for example, to control and/or meter or otherwise monitor use of electronically stored or disseminated information. Such a virtual distribution environment may be used to protect rights of various participants in electronic commerce and other electronic or electronic-facilitated transactions. Distributed and other operating systems, environments and architectures, such as, for example, those using tamper-resistant hardware-based processors, may establish security at each node.

Abstract: Systems and methods are disclosed for embedding information in software and/or other electronic content such that the information is difficult for an unauthorized party to detect, remove, insert, forge, and/or corrupt. The embedded information can be used to protect electronic content by identifying the content's source, thus enabling unauthorized copies or derivatives to be reliably traced, and thus facilitating effective legal recourse by the content owner. Systems and methods are also disclosed for protecting, detecting, removing, and decoding information embedded in electronic content, and for using the embedded information to protect software or other media from unauthorized analysis, attack, and/or modification.

Abstract: A novel method and apparatus for protection of streamed media content is disclosed. In one aspect, the apparatus includes control means for governance of content streams or content objects, decryption means for decrypting content streams or content objects under control of the control means, and feedback means for tracking actual use of content streams or content objects. The control means may operate in accordance with rules received as part of the streamed content, or through a side-band channel. The rules may specify allowed uses of the content, including whether or not the content can be copied or transferred, and whether and under what circumstances received content may be “checked-out” of one device and used in a second device. The rules may also include or specify budgets, and a requirement that audit information be collected and/or transmitted to an external server. In a different aspect, the apparatus may include a media player designed to call plugins to assist in rendering content.

Abstract: A computer implemented method and system that generates a video playlist having recommended videos based on a user query object is disclosed. A user query object is used to search for a number of web pages. Summaries are generated for the returned web page search results. Valuable terms and phrases from those summaries may be extracted and used to search video storage sites based on the original user query. Playable videos returned from the video storage sites may be compared to the user query or to the extracted terms and phrases in order to rank the videos, and the most relevant videos may be returned. Those videos may be displayed to the user as a playlist in an Internet browser having an embedded video player.

Abstract: The present invention provides systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection. Electronic appliances such as computers equipped in accordance with the present invention help to ensure that information is accessed and used only in authorized ways, and maintain the integrity, availability, and/or confidentiality of the information. Such electronic appliances provide a distributed virtual distribution environment (VDE) that may enforce a secure chain of handling and control, for example, to control and/or meter or otherwise monitor use of electronically stored or disseminated information. Such a virtual distribution environment may be used to protect rights of various participants in electronic commerce and other electronic or electronic-facilitated transactions. Distributed and other operating systems, environments and architectures, such as, for example, those using tamper-resistant hardware-based processors, may establish security at each node.

Abstract: A computer-implemented system and method for extracting Human Generated Lists from an electronic database is described. The system searches for objects of the same class within a context window to identify Human Generated Lists and stores them to an archive. The archive may be used to generate a relationship network. The system generates variable length data vectors to represent the relationships between the objects within each Human Generated List. This relationship network can then be queried to discover relationships between the objects in the Human Generated Lists and to provide related objects as recommendations.

Abstract: Systems and methods for controlling accuracy of transmitted information are described. A package is assembled based on a numerical value, such as a measurement, and one or more policies associated with the sender. When the package is received by a receiver, it is unpacked to yield a second value representing the numerical value and having a reduced accuracy with respect to the first value. The accuracy reduction depends on policies associated with the receiver and/or the sender. Examples of numerical values in different applications include geo-location data, medical data, and financial data.

Abstract: The present invention provides systems and methods for electronic commerce including secure transaction management and electronic rights protection. Electronic appliances such as computers employed in accordance with the present invention help to ensure that information is accessed and used only in authorized ways, and maintain the integrity, availability, and/or confidentiality of the information. Secure subsystems used with such electronic appliances provide a distributed virtual distribution environment (VDE) that may enforce a secure chain of handling and control, for example, to control and/or meter or otherwise monitor use of electronically stored or disseminated information. Such a virtual distribution environment may be used to protect rights of various participants in electronic commerce and other electronic or electronic-facilitated transactions.

Abstract: A computer-implemented system and process for generating video search engine results page is disclosed. The system provides a query term and retrieves a collection of search results. Tags are generated for each search result and used to match media objects to each search result. The search results and video objects related to each search result are returned as a video search engine results page.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for protecting electronic content from the time it is packaged through the time it is experienced by an end user. Protection against content misuse is accomplished using a combination of encryption, watermark screening, detection of invalid content processing software and hardware, and/or detection of invalid content flows. Encryption protects the secrecy of content while it is being transferred or stored. Watermark screening protects against the unauthorized use of content. Watermark screening is provided by invoking a filter module to examine content for the presence of a watermark before the content is delivered to output hardware or software. The filter module is operable to prevent delivery of the content to the output hardware or software if it detects a predefined protection mark. Invalid content processing software is detected by a monitoring mechanism that validates the software involved in processing protected electronic content.

Abstract: The present invention provides systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection. Electronic appliances such as computers equipped in accordance with the present invention help to ensure that information is accessed and used only in authorized ways, and maintain the integrity, availability, and/or confidentiality of the information. Such electronic appliances provide a distributed virtual distribution environment (VDE) that may enforce a secure chain of handling and control, for example, to control and/or meter or otherwise monitor use of electronically stored or disseminated information. Such a virtual distribution environment may be used to protect rights of various participants in electronic commerce and other electronic or electronic-facilitated transactions. Distributed and other operating systems, environments and architectures, such as, for example, those using tamper-resistant hardware-based processors, may establish security at each node.

Abstract: Software self-checking mechanisms are described for improving software tamper resistance and/or reliability. Redundant tests are performed to detect modifications to a program while it is running. Modifications are recorded or reported. Embodiments of the software self-checking mechanisms can be implemented such that they are relatively stealthy and robust, and so that it they are compatible with copy-specific static watermarking and other tamper-resistance techniques.

Abstract: The present invention provides systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection. Electronic appliances such as computers equipped in accordance with the present invention help to ensure that information is accessed and used only in authorized ways, and maintain the integrity, availability, and/or confidentiality of the information. Such electronic appliances provide a distributed virtual distribution environment (VDE) that may enforce a secure chain of handling and control, for example, to control and/or meter or otherwise monitor use of electronically stored or disseminated information. Such a virtual distribution environment may be used to protect rights of various participants in electronic commerce and other electronic or electronic-facilitated transactions. Distributed and other operating systems, environments and architectures, such as, for example, those using tamper-resistant hardware-based processors, may establish security at each node.

Abstract: The present invention provides systems and methods for conducting electronic transactions in a distributed computing environment. A communications protocol is provided that enables reliable transactional state synchronization for peers participating in a distributed transaction. A transaction processing application is deployed on a local computer system to manage transactions thereon. The local computer system contacts a remote computer system to obtain authorization to execute a transaction. The local computer system initiates a failure-recovery job that is operable to automatically resend status signals and other information to the remote system if the communication with the remote system exhibits certain predefined fault conditions. The remote system is able to dynamically adjust the definition of the predefined fault conditions. If the transaction concludes without triggering the predefined fault conditions, the failure-recovery job is cancelled.

Abstract: A technique for integrating message authentication with encryption and decryption is disclosed. Intermediate internal states of the decryption operation are used to generate a validation code that can be used to detect manipulation of the encrypted data. The technique is optimized with respect to processing time, execution space for code and runtime data, and buffer usage. The technique is generally applicable to a variety of block ciphers, including TEA, Rijndael, DES, RC5, and RC6.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for authentication by combining a Reverse Turing Test (RTT) with password-based user authentication protocols to provide improved resistance to brute force attacks. In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, a method is provided for user authentication, the method including receiving a username/password pair associated with a user; requesting one or more responses to a first Reverse Turing Test (RTT); and granting access to the user if a valid response to the first RTT is received and the username/password pair is valid.

Abstract: A hardware Secure Processing Unit (SPU) is described that can perform both security functions and other information appliance functions using the same set of hardware resources. Because the additional hardware required to support security functions is a relatively small fraction of the overall device hardware, this type of SPU can be competitive with ordinary non-secure CPUs or microcontrollers that perform the same functions. A set of minimal initialization and management hardware and software is added to, e.g., a standard CPU/microcontroller. The additional hardware and/or software creates an SPU environment and performs the functions needed to virtualize the SPU's hardware resources so that they can be shared between security functions and other functions performed by the same CPU.

Abstract: The present invention provides systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection. Electronic appliances such as computers equipped in accordance with the present invention help to ensure that information is accessed and used only in authorized ways, and maintain the integrity, availability, and/or confidentiality of the information. Such electronic appliances provide a distributed virtual distribution environment (VDE) that may enforce a secure chain of handling and control, for example, to control and/or meter or otherwise monitor use of electronically stored or disseminated information. Such a virtual distribution environment may be used to protect rights of various participants in electronic commerce and other electronic or electronic-facilitated transactions. Distributed and other operating systems, environments and architectures, such as, for example, those using tamper-resistant hardware-based processors, may establish security at each node.