Patent ID: 7814144

Claim:
A recommending server connected to a user terminal and content server via a network, the recommending server comprising: a communications unit that transmits recommendation data to the user terminal upon receipt of recommendation request from the user terminal, the recommendation data containing an identifier of provided content and a subscription time, at which the user terminal is permitted to start downloading the provided content, in correspondence with the identifier of the provided content; an evaluation data storage that stores evaluation data containing the identifier of a content, the degree of similarity between the content and an other content, an integrated value that is the number of times the content server has provided the content in correspondence with the similarity, and an identifier of the user terminal, in correspondence with the identifier of the content, that has previously downloaded the other content similar to the content; a list data storage that stores content list data containing the identifier of the content, a data size of the content, and a start time, at which the content server starts providing the content, in correspondence with the identifier of the content; an extraction unit that extracts the identifier of the content and the similarity in correspondence with the identifier of the user terminal in the evaluation data; a sorting unit that sorts, in descending order of similarity value, a plurality of sets of the identifiers of the provided content and similarities stored in a memory, and erases from the memory the sets of the identifiers of the provided content and the similarities after a predetermined position in the sorting order; a production unit that produces recommendation data containing the identifier of the provided content in correspondence with the identifier of the user terminal in the evaluation data, and the subscription time in correspondence with the identifier of the provided content, the subscription time being calculated using the similarity extracted by the extraction unit and the start time in correspondence with the identifier of the content in the content list data; a holder data storage that stores content holder data containing the identifier of the content and data on download of the content in correspondence with the identifier of the content; and a download timetable calculator that calculates the subscription time using the integrated value, the data size, and the data on download, and that outputs the subscription time to the recommendation data production unit.