Patent ID: 7343324

Claim:
A method for publishing content, the method comprising: receiving, by a publishing system, a selection of content from a user of said publishing system, said selection identifying an item of content; receiving, by said publishing system, a request to publish the selected content from the user of said publishing system; providing, by said publishing system in response to the request from the user to publish the content, information to a plurality of distributor systems, said information comprising a rights specification identifier and at least one of a description of the content, metadata of the content, content identifiers, publisher information, and content repository indication, said rights specification identifier indicating the rights that are available for distribution and sale; upon receiving the information, generating, by one of the plurality of distributor systems, a response using said provided information and one or more pre-defined rules stored in a database including evaluating said rights specification identifier against said one or more pre-defined rules, wherein said one of the plurality of distributor systems uses said pre-defined rules to determine whether said one of the plurality of distributor systems is interested in the content specified by said provided information; providing, by said one of the plurality of distributor systems, the response to said publishing system; determining, by said publishing system, whether the response indicates that said one of the plurality of distributor systems is interested in the content specified by said provided information; and upon said publishing system determining that said one of the plurality of distributor systems is interested in the content specified by said provided information, supplying, by said publishing system, metadata and a rights specification to said one of the plurality of distributor systems, said metadata including identification and descriptive data of said content, and said rights specification including at least one of distribution rights, usage rights and rights conditions.