Patent ID: 7970820

Claim:
A method for managing content comprising: associating content, by a content provider, into a set of content segments; associating a distribution network into a set of subnetworks, wherein each subnetwork includes one or more content sources; distributing the content so that the set of content segments is distributed among the one or more content sources in each subnetwork in the distribution network; obtaining a request for the content from a client computing device; identifying a subnetwork in the distribution network for providing the requested content based on a network locality of the client computing device relative to subnetworks in the distribution network; for each content segment in the set of content segments, identifying at least one or more content sources in the identified subnetwork corresponding to a registered content provider for providing the content segment; providing identification information responsive to the request for content from the client computing device, wherein the identification information includes, for each content segment, network addresses of the identified registered content provider and reconciliation information to be provided to the identified registered content provider; obtaining from at least one registered content provider a reconciliation request, wherein the reconciliation request includes reconciliation information received by the registered content provider from client computing devices; and reconciling the reconciliation request from the at least one registered content provider.