Content publication

A system comprising:

• a publishing computer including a storage medium containing instructions stored in a machine readable form adapted to be implemented by a processor on the publishing computer for:
• receiving authorization to publish content using a peer-to-peer content distribution system, the authorization including a certificate issued by an authorization body to authorize the publishing computer to distribute the content, wherein the content is divided into a plurality of blocks for distribution using the peer-to-peer distribution system;
• sending information about the content and the authorization to a tracker computer;
• calculating a plurality of series of checksums for the content, wherein the series of checksums includes at least one checksum generated for each block of the content, wherein the checksums are generated using a sequence of pseudo-random numbers which are combined with corresponding blocks of content;
• and
• sending the plurality of series of checksums to the tracker computer for distribution to peer computers for use by the peer computers in verifying integrity of the content following download, wherein the different peer computers receive different series of checksums.

A method implemented by a processor on a first computer executing instructions stored in machine readable form on a storage media, the method comprising:

• sending a request from the first computer to a second computer for obtaining information about content published using a peer-to-peer content distribution system, wherein the content is divided into a plurality of blocks for distribution using the peer-to-peer distribution system;
• receiving the information about the content at the computer, the information about the content including an authorization issued to a publisher to publish the content, a location of the content, and a plurality of checksum values for verifying integrity of the content, wherein the checksum values are generated using a sequence of pseudo-random numbers which are combined with corresponding blocks of the content;
• verifying the authorization of the publisher to publish the content;
• downloading the plurality of blocks of the content to the first computer;
• verifying integrity of each block of the content downloaded from the location using corresponding ones of the plurality of checksum values.