EP1754189A1

EP1754189A1 - Method for downloading with an advertising insert and specific player

Info

Publication number: EP1754189A1
Application number: EP05766690A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Lassad Toumi; Nikolay Kovalskiy
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2004-05-25
Filing date: 2005-05-25
Publication date: 2007-02-21
Also published as: CN1989522A; FR2870952A1; US20080209060A1; WO2005119537A1; FR2870952B1

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for downloading at least one digital file from a digital network using at least one server and an external device, which are connected to the network, said method comprising a step for downloading the digital file by means of the external device, and a step for displaying an advertisement. The inventive method is characterised in that the step for displaying an advertisement takes place during the downloading step, and the advertisement is not integrated into the downloaded digital file and is streamed over the network. Furthermore, said method uses means for blocking the digital files.

Description

DOWNLOAD METHOD WITH ADVERTISING INSERTION AND SPECIFIC PLAYER

The present invention relates to the field of downloading digital files from the Internet.

The present invention relates more particularly to a method allowing the insertion of an advertisement during the downloading of a digital file, the digital file being, moreover, blocked as long as said advertisement has not been completely consumed, it that is to say at least fully viewed.

The prior art already knows, by patent application US 2004/024247 (Don Bowman), a method and a system for the dynamic modification of digital files in a file sharing network, such as peer-to-peer. post (Peer-to-Peer). Said digital files are modified by the addition of an advertisement before they reach the end user, or are modified by the addition of audible artifacts that can be removed by paying a license fee for the file .

The prior art already knows, by patent application US 2003/0144 310 (June Kee Jung), a process providing, on the Internet, multimedia files combined with advertising. The invention of the application allows users to download multimedia files for free or at very low cost and allows advertisers to efficiently broadcast their advertising by providing music files, video files, etc. with advertisements to users. They see or hear these advertisements while they "play" the downloaded multimedia files. Also known in the prior art, from PCT patent application WO 01/16666, is a method, a program and a system making it possible to advertise via the Internet. This process provides digital advertisements embedded in multimedia files downloaded from the Internet, and allows companies to generate revenue from these advertisements instead of or in addition to revenue generated by the direct sale of their product. This process, this program and this system create a new standard for integrating digital advertising content into a multimedia file. Also known, from patent application WO 01/57,705, is a solution for downloading a digital file originating from the combination, within the same digital file, of the multimedia file requested with an advertising file. The file is then downloaded and the advertisement is displayed during this download step and / or when the file is replayed later.

These different processes provide solutions where advertising is integrated into the digital file to form only one digital file. From the user's point of view, these solutions "pollute" the digital file since, each time the file is read, the advertisement is read.

Also known, from patent application GB 2 386 521, is a method of protecting a file that does not use any advertising display. Likewise, from the patent application US Pat. No. 6,687,737, a method and a device are known for downloading an advertisement when a user accesses a Web page. This solution cannot be applied in the case of downloading of a multimedia file, requiring control of its execution conditionally on one or more advertising displays. Also known, from patent applications US 2003/033 380 and WO 01/27,824, are methods of advertising display at the same time as loading a web page or downloading files. The disadvantage of these solutions is that once downloaded, the file is free to use, no control is then performed on the file itself.

The prior art also knows, from PCT patent application WO 01/65526, a system and a method making it possible to supply multimedia content to computers via a computer network, such as the Internet, comprising a new media player which can be downloaded to a user's personal computer. The media player includes a user interface that allows a listener to search an online media playlist database and create a personalized playlist including exactly the music selections the listener wants. The multimedia content distribution system provides advertisements which remain visible on the display screen of a user's computer at all times as soon as the application is opened, in particular when musical selections are provided to the user . The advertisements are displayed in a window which always remains at the highest level of the windows on the display screen of the user, even if the latter is running one or more other programs on his computer. This solution offers a permanent display of an advertisement when the multimedia content is downloaded or played and does not provide a solution for a easy management of the conditions for displaying the advertisement, for example by displaying this advertisement only for a predefined number of times the downloaded file is executed. The present invention intends to remedy the drawbacks of the prior art by proposing a method for downloading digital files without adding advertising to said digital files. The files are modified before the download phase, during which an advertisement is displayed. The "consumption" of said advertisement authorizes the exploitation of the file and thus allows normal use of the downloaded digital file. To this end, the invention relates in its most general sense to a method of downloading at least one digital file on a digital network using at least one server and a third party device, connected to said network, comprising a downloading step. of the digital file (s) by said third-party device and a step of displaying an advertisement, characterized in that: - said step of displaying an advertisement takes place during said downloading step, - said advertisement is not integrated into said downloaded digital file and is broadcast continuously on the network (streaming), - in addition, the method implements, at the level of the digital file, means capable of blocking their use.

Preferably, said means implemented to block the use of the digital file or files include a step of encrypting said file to be downloaded. According to a variant, said means implemented to block the use of the digital file (s), comprise a step of encapsulation in a format which owns said file to be downloaded.

Advantageously, said means implemented to block the use of the digital file (s), are deactivated by the use of a specific plug-in. According to a particular embodiment, said at least one digital file is a multimedia file. According to another embodiment, said multimedia file is in MP3 format. Preferably, said digital network is the Internet. In one embodiment, said download of the file is launched after the advertisement is displayed so that said download and said display finish substantially at the same time. In another embodiment, the method comprises, following said step of displaying an advertisement and in response to a request from the third-party device, a step of transmitting a decryption key by the server to the third-party device if the The following parameters are validated: -the IP address of the requester of the request corresponds to the requester of the broadcast advertisement, -the advertisement has been fully broadcast.

In particular, the method comprises a step of removing said means capable of blocking the use of the file when the number of entire broadcasts of an advertisement triggered by the execution of said digital file exceeds a defined threshold. The invention will be better understood with the aid of the description, given below for purely explanatory purposes, of an embodiment of the invention, with reference to the appended figure: - Figure 1 represents the general principle of operation of the present invention; - Figure 2 illustrates a functional architecture of the server (s) for the implementation of the invention; - Figure 3 illustrates a principle of file encryption for the realization of the invention; - Figure 4 illustrates a file download request by a user; - Figures 5 to 7 show different embodiments of the invention; FIG. 8 illustrates the checks carried out before transmitting the decryption key in the present invention; and FIG. 9 illustrates the reading of a file by the user.

The present invention implements a method for downloading digital files, broadcasting advertising during idle browsing times, that is to say the time for transferring digital files from the server to the client.

In order to facilitate understanding of the explanations, the following description is limited to the downloading of digital music files. However, it is obvious that the present invention is not limited to the downloading of such musical files, but allows the downloading of all types of digital files such as, for example, the video, all types of multimedia files, video games, software, documents, ...

In an embodiment illustrated in FIG. 1, the method of the present invention implements a system comprising at least one server connected (1) to a digital network (5) capable of implementing download processes, such as for example Internet or a mobile telephone network, and a set of users (4) having a computer connected to said network.

The server (1) is provided with storage means for storing digital music files, compressed or not, as well as an HTTP server allowing the management of a website by web producers (2) and of request in HTTP format. The compressed files can for example be in MP3 format (MPEG 1 Layer 3) or in a proprietary format such as for example the TMX format, a format comprising a header of information specific to the present invention and a body containing the data to be downloaded in encrypted forms. Uncompressed files are in raw format, usually RAW. A database is present on the server and references all of the digital music files available on the server. This database can optionally associate a set of keywords for each title in order to facilitate association with an advertising server.

With reference to FIG. 2, a MUSIC server 1 is dedicated to the processing of music files and provides the multimedia files as output, and a second server

ADVERTISING (1 ') is dedicated to managing the advertisements that are broadcast. The MUSIC server 1 includes: a signal processing module 11 for compressing files in order to obtain files which can take several different bit rates according to the wishes of the users (96 kilobits per second [kbps], 128 kbps, 256 kbps, for example), module 12 for formatting the music file in order to meet requirements for managing musical rights (DRM - Digital Right Management), for example in WMA (trade name), AAC (trade name), ATTRAC 3+ (name commercial) or TMX (TOUMIX proprietary format), - the database 13 referencing music files, and - encryption software 14 for files in TOUMIX format The server also puts means 11 and 12 for file compression in raw format in a compressed format, for example using an MP3 encoder, and means 14 allowing the encryption of said encoded files in TOUMIX proprietary format.

With reference to FIG. 3, the encryption of the digital file 20 by the encryption module 14 consists in the generation of an encryption key dissociated from the file and in the encoding of the file in AES 256-bit base, for example. In the proprietary format, the file 20 is encapsulated. The file obtained 21 includes, among other things, a header 22 relating to the information contained in the file 21, as well as a field 23 indicating the number of advertisements necessary for the withdrawal of the encapsulation. A unique key 24 from the encryption module 14 is associated with each TMX file 21.

Still with reference to FIG. 2, a second server (1 ′) stores all of the advertisements 15 supplied by advertisers (3) and which will be disseminated by this process and has a server. The server can indifferently be implemented in PHP, Perl, ASP or other equivalent language. A database 16, for example in MySQL format, stores all of the information on advertisements, for example the path of the advertising files, the name of the advertiser. The database also stores all of the statistical information 17 recorded during downloads or during user connections to the download site of the present invention: this user information is, for example, sex, popular musical genres, email address, ... In a variant, the system according to the present invention implements only one server. The advertising and statistics databases are then implemented on the same server as the music files. In a variant, several servers are arranged on the network to provide several download access points.

The server is accessible via a client - server interface. For example, this interface is an Internet website.

The user wishing to download music files by the method of the present invention connects to said website. During his first visit, the user registers so as to obtain a unique user identifier allowing future connections. The server, via the website, gives the user access to the database 13 listing all the musical titles available. The information in this database is varied to allow searches according to different criteria. The most used information is, usually, the title, the artist, the album, the musical genre but this list is not limited as to the possible exploitable criteria. In a particular embodiment, said registration step performs the download of a plug-in or plug-in on the client workstation of the user. This step is completely transparent to the user, that is to say it takes place without the user being aware of it. Eventually, warnings from the operating system are sent to the user for the installation of certain components, in particular those using activeX controls (trade name). This plug-in necessarily includes means capable of downloading files, displaying broadcast advertising and decompressing downloaded files.

In a variant, the plug-in further comprises an audio interface and / or a user interface in order to constitute an audio player.

In another embodiment, the download of the plug-in is carried out voluntarily by the user. This may be the case, when the user already having an identifier for accessing the server wishes to install the device implementing the method of the present invention on another computer. For this, he makes the voluntary step of downloading and installing said plug-in. The method of the present invention implements various stages, in particular the downloading of a music file and the display of an advertisement. With reference to FIG. 4, the general method consists, for the user, of: - connecting to the server via a web page; - following thematic requests for example, click 31 on the link to download the desired music file; - an analysis of the client workstation is made to determine if the download of the plug-in is necessary (absence of the plug-in or old version) 32: • if necessary, the plug-in is downloaded 33 and installed 34 on the workstation ; the user can refuse the installation 35, in which case the process is aborted, - then a dialog box inviting the user to choose the folder in which the file to be downloaded will be displayed 36, - an advertisement is displayed 37 during the download of the file, a window indicating the end of the download is then presented to the user 38; -the process ends. With reference now to FIG. 5, following the selection of a title, the user initiates the download by clicking, for example, on an Internet link carrying the extension "TLF" or executing a special protocol, for example with a prefix "tmx: // ...". When reading this extension, the plug-in and the associated reader are launched (40). The plug-in reads the "TLF" file which contains information such as the path to the music file on the server or the advertisement to be broadcast. Optionally, this particular protocol link may contain the information necessary for the download (such as the path to the download server, the associated graphic design, the advertisements to be broadcast among others). In another embodiment, the plug-in requests from the server 1 the information associated with this link (via an HTTP protocol or sockets), the server then sends this information by referring to its own database. Optionally, the plug-in presents the user with a download confirmation request, displaying additional information such as the download price, etc. After validation by the internet user or directly if a confirmation is not necessary, the download program sends a download session creation signal (41) to the server, this in order to ensure the security of the program-server connections. The program receives from the server a session key, which it will use in all its requests to identify itself. At the same time the server receives from the reader a request to send the file to be downloaded (42).

The server receives an HTTP request from the reader for a TMX file request and a second PHP type request indicating the name of the TMX file. The server encodes, if necessary, the music file (if it is in raw format) using suitable means, such as an MP3 encoder, then modifies it in the proprietary TMX format (Toumix) so that it cannot be used. than with said reader or plug-in. In a particular embodiment, the files contained on the server are directly presented in TMX format. In parallel (43), an advertising request is issued by the specific player for the attention of the ADVERTISING server (1 '), which interprets the request, selects, using the advertising database, an advertisement associated with the file. music to download and all the management information for this advertisement, for example the number of times the file with advertisement is read. The player downloads

(44) then directly the advertising content and displays it

(45) to the user. Simultaneously, the player then downloads (46) said music file.

In another embodiment, the advertising content is downloaded before the downloading of said musical file so that said advertising content is presented to the user during the download. Said advertising content can be either video sequences, animated sequences, “flash” animations, still images, banners, etc.

According to a variant, the advertising content is broadcast by video stream and displayed in real time while the music file is downloaded. In another embodiment illustrated by FIG. 6, the downloading 46 of said content is launched “X” seconds before the end of the advertising broadcast 45. The value “X” is determined empirically so that the download of the file and the broadcasting of advertising ends at the same time. For example, "X" can be calculated by dividing the size of the file to be downloaded by the download speed available to the user. The advantage of this solution is that in case of interruption of the broadcasting of the advertisement, the music file is not fully downloaded to the client computer. The request for content arriving at the content server is deferred in time and takes place only after the advertising server has sent a request intervening "X" seconds before the end of the advertising broadcast. At the end of the process, the download session is closed (47). In a variant illustrated in FIG. 7, the download request is sent at the same time as the advertisement broadcast request, but the download (46) of the content is blocked (48) and does not resume until "X" seconds before the end of broadcast of the advertising message (45).

The reader who displays the advertisement can be assigned rules so that the advertisement display window: • is continuously visible for the duration of the download, • cannot be hidden by other windows open on the client computer • cannot be moved outside the "visible" window of the client computer • cannot be minimized in the task bar of the operating system • stops downloading said music file if it is closed.

Many computer possibilities exist to implement these steps, for example, functions relating to the properties of the Windows operating system.

Returning to FIG. 5, when the download ends and the advertisement has not been interrupted, the player requests (50) from the server 1 the file decryption key. The server sends (52) the key if all the conditions have been met (verification step 51). On receipt, the key is used to decrypt (53) the proprietary format and access the content of the downloaded file. Following the decryption, the reader makes the read commands accessible. The user can thus listen to the file, the decryption being carried out in real time by said reader and the means provided by its plug-in. The display of the advertisement may continue or give way to the display of other information, for example the jacket of the CD from which the title listened to comes from. The download session is then closed (47) and possibly statistics are sent (54) by the player to the servers 1 and / or the.

The verification of the conditions in order to provide the decryption key is illustrated in FIG. 8. The verification can only take place if the verification module has received the notification of the advertising signal launched (60), of advertising broadcast ended (61) and decryption key request (62) by the server management software (1 '). On the basis of the information transmitted in these requests, the module carries out the following checks 63: -the IP address of the requester of the request corresponds to that of the advertiser, - the time elapsed since the notification 60 is greater than the time of duration of the advertisement. If the verification is positive, the decryption key is sent (52).

Additional functions implemented by the plug-in make it possible to save the downloaded file in encrypted TMX format as delivered by the server or in another electronic musical format, the best known of which are "Mp3", "wav". As long as the number of reads of the file with advertising has not been achieved, only the backup in proprietary format can be performed. The player saves the downloaded digital music file and adds in the owner header information relating to the downloaded advertisement, namely the offline version of the advertisement (i.e. the advertisement which will be broadcast if the user is not connected to the Internet the next time the file is read), the number of readings remaining. Each new reading of said file can only be performed on the specific reader associated with the plug-in and results in the display of an advertisement. Either the computer is disconnected from the Internet and the advertisement is a pre-downloaded flash animation or a pre-downloaded still image, or the computer is still connected to the network and the advertisement can be a broadcast video stream. Once all the readings have been made, the file can be saved in another audio format as mentioned above, in agreement with a DRM server which can be defined in the specific player or server 1.

These additional functions and the use of the files are illustrated in FIG. 9. 70: the user requests the player to read a downloaded file, 71: the player checks the state of digital rights management on the file with the server 1, which indicates to him that less than N viewing of advertisements has taken place for this file, 72: the player makes a request for a request for advertising content with the server ADVERTISING the, on receipt of the advertisement (73), the player displays this (74), 75: the end of advertising signal is transmitted to the server in order to update the number of readings carried out, 76: the user can then read his file.

Then, 77: when the number of readings carried out corresponds to that planned to unlock the file, the player requests the decryption key, 78: after verification, the key is returned to him, 79: the user can export the content definitively encapsulated in TOUMIX format in its original format (for example MP3). When using the reader, the latter implements means of collecting statistics, for example the number of advertisements displayed, the number of clicks on the advertisements displayed to go to the advertiser's site. When the user connects to said website, the reader transmits to the server all the statistics that he has collected during his use. The server stores them in the statistics database as mentioned above. Using a MySQL database makes it easy to use this data.

Claims

1. Method for downloading at least one digital file on a digital network using at least one server and a third party device, connected to said network, comprising a step of downloading the digital file by said third device and a display step of an advertisement, characterized in that: - said step of displaying an advertisement takes place during said downloading step, - said advertisement is not integrated into said downloaded digital file and is broadcast continuously on the network (streaming ), - in addition, the method implements, at the level of the digital file, means capable of blocking their use.

2. Method for downloading at least one digital file according to claim 1, characterized in that said means implemented to block the use of the digital file (s), comprise a step of encrypting said file To download.

3. Method for downloading at least one digital file according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that said means implemented to block the use of the digital file (s), comprise a step encapsulation in a proprietary format of said download file.

4. Method for downloading at least one digital file according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the said means used works to block the use of the digital file (s), are deactivated by the use of a specific plug-in.

5. Method for downloading at least one digital file according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the digital file (s) is a multimedia file.

6. Method for downloading at least one digital file according to the preceding claim, characterized in that said multimedia file is in MP3 format.

7. Method for downloading at least one digital file according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that said digital network is the Internet.

8. Downloading method according to claim 1, characterized in that said download of the file is launched after the advertisement is displayed so that said download and said display finish substantially at the same time.

9. Downloading method according to claim 1, characterized in that it comprises, following said step of displaying an advertisement and in response to a request from the third-party device, a step of transmitting a decryption key by the server to the third-party device if the following parameters are validated: -the IP address of the requester of the request corresponds to the requester of the broadcast advertisement,

10. Downloading method according to claim 1, characterized in that it comprises a step of removing said means capable of blocking the use of the file when the number of entire broadcasts of an advertisement triggered by the execution of said digital file a defined threshold.