Patent ID: 7979447

Claim:
A method for use in identifying one or more sources of content, the method comprising: electronically receiving, at the listing service provider and from over the distributed network, a request to access a listing of content; receiving and identifying at the listing service provider restriction criteria comprising restriction criteria corresponding to a method of delivery and cost to access content; evaluating, in response to the identifying of the restriction criteria, a plurality of metadata associated with registered content identifiers, where each registered content identifier is register with the listing service provider and represents exclusively one content that is different than the content represented by the other registered content identifiers and is a unique identifier of the represented one content; identifying, in response to the evaluating of the metadata, as defined within the metadata each registered content identifier that satisfies the restriction criteria; identifying content titles associated with each of the identified registered content identifiers having metadata that satisfied the restriction criteria; compiling a first listing of the identified content titles, with one content title corresponding with one of the registered content identifiers; communicating the first listing of identified content titles over the distributed network; receiving, in response to the communicating the first listing, a first selection from over the distributed network, where the first selection comprises an indication of a selected first content title of the first listing of the identified content titles where the first content title corresponds to the first content; identifying, in response to the received selection of the first content title, a first registered content identifier corresponding exclusively with the selected first content title; evaluating a first metadata of the listing service provider where the first metadata is directly associated with the first registered content identifier, and identifying from the first metadata multiple content providers registered with the listing service provider as sources to provide to one or more users the first content that corresponds with the first registered content identifier; identifying, for one or more of the multiple identified content providers, a cost to a user to access the first content, and a link over the distributed network to access the corresponding content provider; generating a listing of content providers comprising a list of each of the identified multiple content providers and their corresponding costs and links; and communicating over the distributed network the listing of content providers such that the multiple identified registered content providers are configured to distribute the first content.