System and method for the controlled on-demand distribution of content via a centralized server and a peer-to-peer network

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium containing instructions which, when executed by a processing system, cause the processing system to perform a method, the method comprising:

• determining, at a server, whether content is available for subsequent selection and within a peer-to-peer network for a client in the peer-to-peer network to request;
• advertising the requested content as being available only when there is a plurality of clients currently on a peer-to-peer network that have the content available for download;
• receiving, at the server, a request from a client for that content, wherein the requesting client and the server are part of the peer-to-peer network;
• determining whether the requesting client has access rights to the content;
• if the requesting client has access rights to the content, then determining one or more other clients on the peer-to-peer network that have the content available for download;
• selecting, by the server, from the one or more other clients, a client closest to the requesting client;
• allowing the requesting client to download the content from the selected client;
• determining whether the download of the content from the selected client was able to be completed by the requesting client;
• if the download of the content was not able to be completed by the requesting client, then selecting a second client from the one or more other clients;
• and
• allowing the requesting client to continue downloading the content from the second client.