Patent ID: 6976057

Claim:
A content acquiring device comprising: cache means for temporarily storing received content: acquisition request accepting means for accepting an acquisition request for content; cache deciding means for deciding whether or not the content requested by the acquisition request is stored in the cache means; validity expiration setting means for setting a validity expiration as an update expiration of the content based on a validity term of the content, when it is decided by the cache deciding means that the content is stored in the cache means; acquisition request transmitting means for transmitting the acquisition request for the content, when the content is past the validity expiration set by the validity expiration setting means; content receiving means for receiving content based on the acquisition request transmitted from the acquisition request transmitting means, wherein if a control section determines that the content is received normally by the content receiving means, the control section updates with the content received the cache means; and further comprising validity term holding means for holding a previously held validity term, and validity term addition deciding means for deciding whether or not the validity term is associated with the content, when it is decided by the cache deciding means that the content is stored in the cache means, the validity expiration setting means serving to set the validity expiration based on the previously held validity term held by the validity term holding means when it is decided by the validity term addition deciding means that the validity term was not associated, wherein when the content requested to be acquired from the content server does not exist or cannot be found, the control section deletes the corresponding content stored in the cache section.