Method and system for a hosted digital music library sharing service
AssigneePendragon Wireless LLC
InventorsDaniel J. Lin, Christopher K. Hess, Eric F. Allen
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A hosted web service is provided to enable the legitimate sharing and reselling digital music among subscribers to the web service by leveraging the teachings of the first sale doctrine of copyright law. By maintaining a single copy of properly purchased song within the system that can be only accessed by one subscriber at a time, the web service preserves the rights of the copyright holder of the digital music while encouraging a community sharing.
Claims20
A computer-implemented method performed by a server hosting a web service for sharing a digital copy of media with a borrower, wherein the digital copy is stored in association with an account of an owner of the digital copy of the media in a media storage database coupled to the server, the method comprising:
- receiving a request to borrow the digital copy from the borrower;
- verifying that the digital copy was purchased by the owner through an ecommerce store component of the web service and has not been downloaded to a personal computer by the owner;
- if the verifying step determines that the digital copy was not purchased by the owner through the ecommerce store component or that the digital copy has been downloaded to the personal computer, denying the request to borrow the digital copy;
- and
- if the verifying step determines that the digital copy was purchased by the owner through the ecommerce store component and has not been downloaded to the personal computer, copying the digital copy from the account of the owner into an account of the borrower thereby enabling access to the digital copy by the borrower through the web service, and removing the digital copy from the account of the owner thereby prohibiting access to the digital copy by the owner.
The method of clam 1 wherein the step of copying is implemented by adding a pointer associated with the account of the borrower to the memory address of the digital copy and the step of removing is implemented by deleting a pointer associated with the account of the owner to the memory address of the digital copy.
A hosted web service for sharing digital media content among subscribers to the web service, the service comprising:
- a server comprising (i) a web server component for serving user interfaces to manage digital media content and receiving a borrowing request to borrow a digital copy of media from a subscriber, (ii) an ecommerce store for selling digital media content to subscribers, and (iii) a subscriber sharing component for permitting the borrowing request by verifying that the digital copy was purchased by an owner of the digital copy through the ecommerce store and was not downloaded to a personal computer by the owner and denying the borrowing request if the digital copy was not purchased by the owner through the ecommerce store component or if the digital copy has been downloaded to the personal computer, denying the request to borrow the digital copy;
- and
- a database coupled to the server, the database comprising subscriber accounts, wherein each of the subscriber accounts contains subscriber registration information, attributes information relating to digital media content accessible by the subscriber account, and digital content accessible to the subscriber account.
A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by a processor of a computer system, causes the processor to facilitate the sharing of digital media content among subscribers of a web service running on the computer system, by performing the steps of:
- receiving a request to borrow a copy of digital media from a borrower-subscriber;
- verifying that the digital copy was purchased by an owner-subscriber of the digital copy through an ecommerce store component of the web service and has not been downloaded to a personal computer by the owner-subscriber;
- if the verifying step determines that the digital copy was not purchased by the owner-subscriber through the ecommerce store component or that the digital copy has been downloaded to the personal computer, denying the request to borrow the digital copy;
- and
- if the verifying step determines that the digital copy was purchased by the owner-subscriber through the ecommerce store and has not been downloaded to the personal computer, copying the copy of digital media from an account of the owner-subscriber of the copy into an account of the borrower-subscriber thereby enabling access to the copy by the borrower-subscriber through the web service, and removing the copy from the account of the owner-subscriber thereby prohibiting access to the copy by the owner-subscriber.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.