DEVICE AND METHOD FOR PROTECTED TRANSMISSION AND REPRESENTATION OF ELECTRONICALLY PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS

摘要

Publishing electronic media over electronic marketing channels such as the Internet promises interesting business opportunities; however, due to the possibility of copying digital media in a qualitatively perfect manner, a protection of user rights in such electronic media becomes a key question. To solve this problem in an efficient manner, there is provided, according to the invention, an apparatus for protecting electronically published documents with a local computer system (14) which can be connected by way of a data transmission medium (10) to an external data source (12). The local computer system (14) has a local data storage means (18) for storing data of the electronically published document in a form which is not usable by a user, and means (24) for receiving and processing additional protected data provided by the external data source (12) by way of the data transmission medium (10). Linking means (26) are provided to link a storage content of the local data storage means (18) to the additional data and to produce the electronically published document in usable form therefrom.