JP2002163463A - Method/device for managing history of object use and recording medium stored with management program for history of object use - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method/device for managing a history of object use which enable grasp of the utilization history of an object to be utilized on an information processor and can be applied to charging processing of the object, e.g. SOLUTION: An object use monitoring program 14b grasps the actual use history program of an object (target object 14d) introduced to the information processor (personal computer 10) and stores the use history as reusable data (monitoring data 14c).

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

The present invention relates to an object use history management method, an object use history management device, and a recording medium storing an object use history management program. More specifically, an object use history management method, an object use history management device, and an object use history management program that can grasp the use history of an object such as an image or a sound used on an information processing apparatus and can be applied to, for example, an object billing process And a recording medium storing the same.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer has been visually recognized as a combination of various objects due to the improvement of hardware performance and the spread of an OS (operating system) having an excellent GUI (graphical user interface). It has come to have a UI (user interface) with excellent operability. Most of today's UIs are a collection of objects. For example, a window object is composed of various control objects such as a title bar object, a menu bar object, and a client area object.

[0003] There are many types of objects. For example, in addition to the above control objects, image data pasted on the title of the command button control and image data pasted on the desktop screen (so-called “wallpaper”) are also one of the objects. An object is understood to be data or a collection of data that can be operated independently as objects. Objects have skeleton (skeletal) attributes in object-oriented programming such as methods and properties, and images have Data and audio data which do not have a skeleton attribute themselves can be divided into two, but the present invention does not distinguish between them.

By the way, among objects, what is called “wallpaper” (hereinafter “wallpaper object”)
Or "wallpaper data". ) Is an image object serving as the background of the desktop, and is an object that is relatively easy for the user to see. In general, a wallpaper that matches the taste of the user is intentionally displayed.
It is used to expect visual effects such as soothing mood.

For this reason, as shown in FIG. 7, many users find out their favorite wallpaper data 1 from OS standard wallpaper data, or if they cannot find a desired one, the Internet 2 or magazine appendix. From the FD 3 or the CD-ROM 4 or the like and use it as wallpaper data for the computer 5 of the user. Most of these wallpaper data 1 is free data that does not charge usage fees. However, some of the wallpaper data 1 uses the works of famous designers or displays useful character information. Wallpaper data distributed for a fee with a certain added value (hereinafter referred to as “paid object”)
There are also not a few.

[0006]

However, in the case of providing a paid object (wallpaper data in the above example), it is possible to collect a usage fee by performing a charging process at the time of downloading from the Internet or the like. For example, there is a problem in that it is not possible to flexibly collect usage fees according to the usage results on a computer, and thus it is not possible to increase the variation of the billing process (it has to be fixed to only temporary billing). However, since the temporary charging cannot be applied to the CD-ROM of the magazine appendix, there is a problem that the sales channel is limited exclusively to the Internet.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a method of managing object use history and an object use history management which can grasp the use history of an object used on an information processing apparatus and can be applied to, for example, an object billing process. It is to provide a device.

[0008]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In order to achieve the above object, the present invention grasps an actual use history of an object introduced into an information processing apparatus and stores the use history. According to the present invention, the use history of the object is stored inside the information processing apparatus as reusable data.

[0009]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below in detail with reference to the drawings. In the following description, the specification or examples of various details and examples of numerical values, character strings, and other symbols are merely reference for clarifying the idea of the present invention, and all or some of them Obviously, the spirit of the invention is not limited.
In addition, well-known methods, well-known procedures, well-known architectures, and well-known circuit configurations (hereinafter, “known matters”) will not be described in detail, but this is also for the purpose of simplifying the description. It does not intentionally exclude all or some of the matters. Such well-known matters can be known to those skilled in the art at the time of filing the present invention, and therefore are naturally included in the following description.

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the configuration of a personal computer 10.
Are a CPU 11 (using means), a RAM 12, a disk controller 13, a disk device 14 (storage means), a display controller 15, a display device 16, a keyboard controller 17, a keyboard device 18, a pointing device device 19, a communication control device 20, a main bus 21, a bus interface 22, an internal bus 23, and the like.

The personal computer 10 stores an operating system and various application programs stored in the disk device 14 in advance in the RAM 12.
Is loaded into the CPU and executed by the CPU 11, so that the CPU
Various functions that are virtually realized by an organic combination of hardware resources including the H.11 and software resources (such as an operating system and an application program) are provided to the user. While interacting with the personal computer 10 through a desktop screen or various UI screens displayed on the display device 16, the user operates the keyboard device 18 or the pointing device device 19 to move the cursor, generate a click event, and input characters. To give necessary instructions to the personal computer 10.

Here, the ultimate problem in the present embodiment is to realize an object use history management method and an object use history management device which can grasp the use history of "objects" used in the personal computer 10. The objects whose usage history is to be grasped are objects distributed on a network medium such as the Internet or a storage medium (FD, CD-ROM, or the like) of a magazine appendix, or components of a preinstalled machine or a personal computer (various boards). Objects that are installed and distributed in advance (or distributed and stored in a storage medium attached to them) at the distribution source of the object (for billing processing, etc.) It is an object for which it is necessary to grasp the actual use situation in. Hereinafter, the object whose usage history is to be grasped is referred to as a “target object” for convenience.

[0013] In addition, "use" refers to an act of using information and attributes of the object. For example, in the case of an image object, an act of attaching the image information to a desktop screen as wallpaper and visually displaying the image information. ,
The act of attaching the command button control or window object to each part of the window object to display the image information in a visible manner corresponds to this, or if the object has a skeleton attribute such as a property, use one of the skeleton attributes. An act corresponds to it.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of the storage space of the disk device 14. In this figure, the disk device 14 includes a user application program 14a, an object use monitoring program 14b (storage means, grasping means), monitoring data 14c, a target object 14d (object), an operating system (including various driver programs) 14e, and the like. Is stored. In addition,
The order of storage is for convenience.

The operating system 14e including various driver programs is a personal computer 10
Various OS basic functions such as a file system (FS) are provided by being organically combined with the hardware resources of the OS. The user application program 14a is executed by an API (ApplicationProfile) of the operating system 14e.
The above OS basic functions can be used through a grammable interface or the like. For example, if the user application program 14a is software for browsing web content (so-called browser software), the user can use the browser software to operate the operating system. An arbitrary web server on the Internet can be accessed via the communication control device 20 using the Internet connection function 14e, and for example, wallpaper data distributed for a fee can be downloaded.

In this case, the downloaded wallpaper data is stored in the disk device 14 as a target object 14d. Object use monitoring program 1
4b is the wallpaper data (target object 14
The actual use situation of d) is grasped, and the grasped data is stored in the disk device 14 as monitoring data 14c. Since the object use monitoring program 14b needs to be always in a task execution state for object use monitoring while the personal computer 10 is running,
For example, it is an automatically executed service program or a startup resident type program, and desirably has a mechanism in which the stop and resident release of the service cannot be freely performed by the user.

FIG. 3 is a simplified OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) reference model diagram of the personal computer 10. For example,
By setting the mounting position of the object use monitoring program 14b between the user application program 14a and the operating system 14e, data exchanged between the user application program 14a and the operating system 14e is monitored by the object use monitoring program 14b. Thus, usage monitoring of the target object 14d can be performed. Alternatively, the presence of the object use monitoring program 14b can be hidden from the user's eyes by putting the mounting position closer to the physical layer 24a (hardware resources of the personal computer 10) by putting the object use monitoring program 14b in the driver program layer.

FIG. 4 is a schematic flowchart of the object use monitoring program 14b. The object use monitoring program 14b first determines whether or not the target object 14d is actually used (step S11). This determination is to check whether the information and attributes of the target object 14d are actually used in some task (a task being executed by the user application program 14a or the operating system 14e). If the object is an image object, the usage status of the image object can be known by inquiring the FS (file system) of the operating system 14e. If the target object 14d is being used, a use history (for example, identification information of the target object 14d, use time, etc.) is generated, and the monitoring data 14c is updated with the history data (step S12). Then, it waits for the elapse of a predetermined interval time (“YES” determination in step S13), and repeats the above processing (steps S11 to S13) again.

As described above, according to the object usage monitoring program 14b of this embodiment, the usage status of the target object 14d can be checked at predetermined intervals, and the monitoring data 14c can be updated with the usage history data. . Therefore, for example, when a user downloads paid wallpaper data from the Internet or the like to his or her personal computer 10 and uses it by attaching it to a desktop screen, the actual usage time (when the wallpaper data is displayed on the personal computer 10). 10 has been activated) can be left in the monitoring data 14c as a usage history.

As a result, the distributor of the wallpaper data can obtain the monitoring data 14c from the personal computer 10 of the user by some means, thereby performing a billing process based on the actual usage time. By increasing the variation of the billing form, for example, it is possible to have various sales channels using not only download distribution from the Internet but also medium distribution of magazine supplements.

In the above description, the monitoring data 14c
Although the billing process has been described as an example of the use, the present invention is not limited to this. In short, any usage example based on the actual usage history at the distribution destination of the target object 14d may be used. For example, if the target object 14d is image data such as a product advertisement, the viewing time of the advertisement can be grasped and the advertisement effect can be understood. It can also be used for applications to analyze.

The present invention is, of course, not limited to the above-described embodiments, but includes various modifications within the intended scope. For example, as described below, a measure for preventing unauthorized alteration of the monitoring data 14c may be taken.

FIG. 5 is an example of the object use monitoring program 14b improved to include a countermeasure for preventing unauthorized alteration. In this figure, the object use monitoring program 14b is suspended (step S21) and activated (step S2) at predetermined intervals (timer in the figure).
2) is repeated and the target object 1
The actual use status of 4d (wall paper in the figure) is determined (step S26), and the use history is stored as monitoring data 14c (step S29), which is common to the above-described embodiment, but in the following points. Different.

(1) Time Acquisition from Time Server In step S24, when connection to the Internet is detected, in step S25, a time server on the Internet is automatically accessed to acquire time information. The time server is a server of the first hierarchy (stratum 1) having accurate time information such as an atomic clock or a GPS clock or another server that corrects its own time information based on time information passed from the server. That is. Currently available time servers include, for example, time
-A.timefreq.bldrdoc.gov and others.

The time information that can be obtained from the time server is:
Depending on the transfer protocol used, NTP (Network Ti
me Protocol) time and SNTP (Simple Network Time P)
rotocol) There is a time, but in any case, the personal computer 1 on the client side (side using the time server)
Since the accurate time information does not involve the user 0 at all, in this modified example, the use date and time of the target object 14d is authenticated using the accurate time information (hereinafter, “SNTP time”). The reason is,
It is as follows. In other words, the usage status of the target object 14d is grasped exclusively as the total time actually used. The cumulative time is obtained by accumulating the activation elapsed time (for example, the return value of GetTickCount () of the Windows API) for starting counting immediately after the personal computer 10 is activated. When using a system time that can be freely changed by the user, it is not possible to deny inaccuracy (time lag), and in some cases, the system time may be intentionally changed. The use date and time of the target object 14d is authenticated using the SNTP time at which the user is not involved, thereby improving the accuracy of the use date and time of the target object 14d.

An example of actual use date and time authentication will be described. First, the cumulative operation of the use time is performed by the personal computer 10.
Target object 14d n seconds after starting
Is started, and the first use status determination process (step S26) is executed m (m is an interval time; m> n) seconds later, the first cumulative time is mn Second, and the second cumulative time after the elapse of m seconds is 2m-n seconds. Therefore, if the number of repetitions of the usage status determination process (step S26) is j, the j-th cumulative time after the elapse of jm seconds Can be expressed as “jm-n seconds”. This jm-n second is the target object 14
This is the cumulative use time of d.

On the other hand, the use date and time (especially the use start date and time) of the target object 14d can be obtained from the system time and the SNTP time as described above. However, since the SNTP time cannot be obtained when the terminal is not connected to the Internet (in the case of no connection) (in other words, the time always obtained is only the system time), the system time and the SNTP time for one target object 14d are obtained. There are two cases: when two date and time information using both are obtained, and when only one date and time information using only the system time is obtained. When only one date and time information is obtained, the SNTP The date and time information corresponding to the time is treated as a value “0”. The meaning of this value “0” will be described in the encryption processing part (3) described later.

(2) Judgment of Use Period of Target Object 14d In this modification, the target object 14d
Target object 14d at the time of use status confirmation
It is determined that the usage period has expired (step S26).
4 or stop using the function (for example,
The image quality of the image object is reduced, and the continuous use is permitted, and a warning message indicating that the continuous use fee is to be paid is displayed. The expiration date information can be embedded in the target object 14d by, for example, a digital signature method such as a digital watermark.

(3) Encrypting Process of Monitoring Data 14c Further, in this modified example, the usage history is not saved as it is as the monitoring data 14c, but is encrypted (Steps S27 and S28) and then saved. (Step S29). This is to prevent unauthorized alteration of the monitoring data 14c by the user. The encryption algorithm is DES (Data Encryption Standard) or P
A highly secure one such as GP (Pretty Good Privacy) or RC4 may be used. For example, a simple unique encryption value may be generated by combining the information elements of the usage history.

Now, the identification information (target object ID) of the target object 14 is set to “0099123”.
456001231 ”and the use date and time information obtained from the system time is“ 001001180000 ”(200
0/10/01 18:00: 00), and the accumulated time information is set to "90000000" (millisecond).
Also, the use date and time information obtained from the SNTP time is "00"
1001180512 "(2000/10/01 1
8:05:12), since these information elements are all numerical data, for example, the added value of each information element (0099123456001231 + 0)
010011800000 + 90000000 + 001001
180512), and the added value can be used as a unique encryption value.

If the unique encryption value is stored in the monitoring data 14c together with each information element, each element of the monitoring data 14c is added again after the fact, and the re-added value and the monitoring data 14c are added. By determining a match with the unique encryption value stored in the information element, it is possible to determine whether each information element has been tampered with.

Here, in the above (1), when the date and time information corresponding to the SNTP time cannot be obtained, the value “0” is set.
The reason why it is handled as is that it can be added as a numerical value even in such a case. If the value is not treated as "0", for example, a NULL value or EMPTY
This is because the value becomes a value and an error occurs in the addition operation.

In the above-described addition processing, each information element is simply added, and in some cases, there is a possibility that the way of addition may be lost. Therefore, for example, the day of the week may be determined from the date and time information, and a number for each day of the week (Sunday = 1, Monday = 2, Tuesday = 3, ‥‥) may be added to the unique encryption value. In this way, since the unique encryption value includes an element (day of the week) that is not included in the information element, simplicity can be eliminated and security can be improved.

As described above, according to the present invention including this modified example, the monitoring data 14c stored in the disk device 14 is stored in the target object ID field 25a as shown in FIG. Date / time field 25b, SNTP authentication date / time field 25c, activation elapsed time field 25d, and unique encryption value field 25
The data group 25 includes _n data records 25 _{1 to} 25 _n for each target object 14 composed of e.

For example, according to the above example, FIG.
(B), the in each field 25a~25e of one data record 25 _i of which, respectively, the target object ID "009912345600
1231 ”, use date and time information“ 001001180000 ”obtained from the system time, and accumulated time information“ 900
000 "and usage date / time information" 001001180512 "obtained from the SNTP time,
In addition, an addition value (unique encryption value) of those values and the day value (2000/10/01 → Sunday = 1) “1985570105
31935841691503 ″ can be stored.

Therefore, the target object ID
Object of "0099123456001231"
At the source, by some means, this data record
25 _iBy obtaining the unique encryption value and each information element
Of the tampering with the re-addition value of
And the target information from each information element.
It is necessary to accurately grasp the usage results of the object 14d, etc.
As a result, pay-as-you-go billing or advertising effectiveness
Performing various processes that were not possible before, such as analysis of fruits
The special effect that can be obtained is obtained. here
Then, as the “some means”, for example,
Internet connection to the project usage monitoring program 14b
It is conceivable to implement these access reception means
You. This access receiving means is a target object
A function to accept access from the 14d distribution source,
Access target 14d
To send the monitoring data 14c to be distributed to the distribution source
It should just be.

The main functions of this embodiment are functionally realized by an organic combination of a hardware asset including a microcomputer (CPU) and software assets such as an operating system and various programs. However, since hardware resources and operating systems can use general-purpose ones, it can be said that essential items indispensable to the present invention are substantially collected in the object use monitoring program 14b. Therefore, the present invention provides a recording medium, such as a floppy disk, an optical disk, a compact disk, a magnetic tape, a hard disk, or a semiconductor memory, or a component including such a recording medium, which stores all or a main part of the object use monitoring program 14b. (Unit products, finished products, or semi-finished products). The above recording medium or component is
This includes not only those that are themselves on distribution channels but also those that provide only recorded contents on a network.

[0038]

According to the present invention, the use history of an object is stored as reusable data inside the information processing apparatus. Therefore, by obtaining the stored data at the distribution source of the object, for example, The present invention can be applied to an object billing process and the like. Therefore, in addition to the temporary charging, a charging variation such as a pay-per-use method can be increased, and a sales channel can be expanded by using a medium distribution of a magazine supplement. Further, by encrypting and storing the usage history, it is possible to conceal the stored data, and it is possible to prevent unauthorized acts such as falsification. Also,
At the time of encryption, by including derived information (for example, day of the week information) derived from some information (for example, date and time information) of the information elements constituting the usage history, decryption becomes difficult,
In particular, it is possible to secure the integrity when not using an encryption-only algorithm such as DES or PGP.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of a personal computer 10.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a storage space of a disk device 14;

FIG. 3 is a simplified OSI of the personal computer 10.
It is a reference model figure.

FIG. 4 is a schematic flowchart of an object use monitoring program 14b.

FIG. 5 is an improved example of the object use monitoring program 14b in which an unauthorized tampering prevention measure is taken.

FIG. 6 is monitoring data 14 stored in a disk device 14.
It is a structural diagram of c.

FIG. 7 is a usage state diagram of object data (wallpaper data).

[Explanation of symbols]

11 CPU (using means) 14 Disk device (storage means) 14b Object usage monitoring program (saving means,
Grasping means) 14d target object (object)

Claims (7)

[Claims] 1. An object use history management method comprising: a step of grasping an actual use history of an object introduced into an information processing apparatus; and a step of storing the use history. 2. Storage means for storing an object, use means for using the object, grasp means for grasping the use history of the object, storage means for saving the use history grasped by the grasp means, An object use history management device comprising: 3. The object use history management device according to claim 2, wherein the storage unit encrypts and stores the use history. 4. The object use history management device according to claim 3, wherein the encrypted data includes derived information derived from a part of information of an information element constituting the use history. 5. The object use history management device according to claim 4, wherein the derivative information includes day of the week information calculated from date and time information in the use history. 6. The object use history management according to claim 2, further comprising transmission means for transmitting a use history stored in said storage means to a request source in response to an external request. apparatus. 7. A recording medium storing a program for realizing a grasping means for grasping the use history of an object and a storage means for saving the use history grasped by the grasping means.