Patent ID: 8892472

Claim:
A method of facilitating a loan of digital content comprising: receiving from a user, by a lending server, a selection of digital content to be loaned; presenting, by the lending server, the user with the user's contacts list; receiving, by the lending server, a selection of a contact from the user, the contact being a potential lendee; transmitting, by the lending server, a lending offer to the contact, the lending offer identifying the user and the selected digital content, the lending offer including a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) by which the contact can connect to the lending server, wherein URL contains parameters including a combination of a lending offer ID and an encrypted security hash code; receiving, at the lending server, an acceptance of the lending offer from the contact; verifying, by the lending server, that the parameters contained in the URL used by the contact matches an existing, valid, unexpired lending offer; and providing to the contact, by the lending server, access to the selected digital content and preventing access by the user to the selected digital content.