>From the Edupage newsletter:
PATENTS GRANTED FOR ENCRYPTION OF WEB MUSIC
Three mathematicians at Brown University recently were awarded a
patent for a system that encodes every second of music downloaded
from a Web site with a different encryption key, breaking a
typical song up into more than 200 different codes. NTRU
Cryptosystems, a Rhode Island firm, now owns the patent to the
device. The system, which utilizes "public key" encryption,
makes it impossible to play a song on any other device except for
the one owned by the authorized user. The system works for
virtually all data transmissions between computers, cell phones,
digital music players, or any consumer electronic device that has
Web access. Once a consumer orders music online, the user's
computer or music player gives the Web site's server the encoding
key, which is used to encode the data and then thrown away, and
the music is sent back to the user's computer, which already
knows the key. (New York Times, July 3 2000)
