Patent ID: 7877810

Claim:
A system for a service provider to provide a copy protection service to a plurality of subscribers of the service, wherein each of the plurality of subscribers owns at least one file to be protected by the service from unauthorized copying and each of the plurality of subscribers controls a client computer, the system comprising: a plurality of software agents controlled by the service provider, the plurality of software agents masquerading as nodes in a decentralized network for monitoring and interdicting file sharing activities of the files owned by the plurality of subscribers and being protected by the service; and a control center controlled by the service provider and configured to receive information of such monitoring from the plurality of software agents, process the information to generate processed monitoring information for each of the service protected files, provide the processed monitoring information for each of the service protected files to the client computer controlled by the subscriber owning the protected file, and command the plurality of software agents to perform such interdicting for each of the service protected files according to subscriber selected instructions received from the client computer controlled by the subscriber owning the protected file.