Patent ID: 8752195

Claim:
An information processing apparatus, comprising: a communication circuit configured to communicate with a plurality of information processing apparatuses via a network; an authentication circuit configured to determine, based on personal restriction information including a privacy level of the information processing apparatus relative to a sharing group included in content data in addition to copyright restriction information, whether use of the content data is permitted; a sharing decision circuit configured to determine whether utilization of the content data is permitted based on at least a comparison between a maximum number of sharing terminals information included in the content data and a number of different information processing apparatuses performing synchronous playback with the information processing apparatus; and a synchronous playback circuit configured to play back the content data in synchronism with the different information processing apparatuses, when use of the content data is permitted based on the personal restriction information and the comparison of the maximum number of sharing terminals information and the number of different information processing apparatuses.