Patent ID: 7353206

Claim:
A literary work distribution network system, comprising: one or more customer terminal apparatuses; a management terminal apparatus for enciphering and selling a right of use of a literary work to a customer through a communication circuit, enciphering and transmitting use right frequency information for limitation of at least one of a number of times of use, an hour of use and an amount of use of the literary work to one of said customer terminal apparatuses, and imposing a royalty for the literary work through the communication circuit in accordance with the number of times indicated by the use right frequency information; and a literary work provider terminal apparatus for enciphering and distributing the literary work to a customer through the communication circuit; wherein each of said one or more customer terminal apparatuses comprise: a storage section for storing enciphered literary work data distributed thereto from said literary work provider terminal apparatus, deciphering means for deciphering the enciphered literary work data and right of use of the literary work data stored in said storage section, and a playback circuit for playing back the deciphered literary work data; wherein said deciphering means comprises a use right frequency information storage memory provided therein for storing the use right frequency information deciphered by said deciphering means in such a manner that the deciphered use right frequency information cannot be referred to from the outside; and wherein said deciphering means refers to the use right frequency information stored in said use right frequency information storage memory to read out the enciphered literary work data from said storage section and signals the read out literary work data to said playback circuit.