Patent ID: 8220061

Claim:
A method of making contents public or private for use in a computer system in which an information providing system for providing the contents and a terminal device for browsing the contents are connected to a communication network, the terminal device including a first storage device storing the first file identifier for identifying the contents, the information providing system including a second storage device having a public region accessible from the terminal device and a private region inaccessible from the terminal device, the second storage device storing the contents in the public or private region, and storing the first file identifier for identifying the contents and a second file identifier for identifying the contents while associating them with each other, wherein the first file identifier is stored in both the terminal device and the information providing system, and wherein the second file identifier is only stored in the information providing system, the method comprising: a) causing the terminal device to transmit a request for making the contents public or private and the first file identifier to the information providing system; and b) causing the information providing system to: i) receive the request for making the contents public or private and the first file identifier; ii) read the second file identifier associated with the received first file identifier from the second storage device; iii) transfer the contents corresponding to the read second file identifier to the public region if the received request is for making the contents public, or transfer the contents corresponding to the read second file identifier to the private region if the received request is for making the contents private; and iv) after transferring the contents, change the second file identifier based on a storage location of the transferred contents to a third file identifier and store the received first file identifier and the third file identifier in the second storage device while associating them with each other, wherein the first file identifier stored in the terminal device and the information providing system remains unchanged after transferring the contents.