Patent ID: 8355506

Claim:
A method for permitting a viewer to view content, the method comprising: providing the content, where at least part of the content is scrambled; identifying a first portion of the content as “must see” content based on meta-data in the content that indicate a beginning and an end of the “must see” content, the “must see” content comprising a plurality of “n” adjacent sub-portions; identifying a second portion of the content as “dependent” content based on meta-data in the content that indicate a beginning and an end of the “dependent” content, the “dependent” content being scrambled, the “dependent” content comprising a series of more than “n” sub-portions; descrambling the “must see” content, only if the “must see” content-is scrambled; only if the “must see” content is played back in a normal mode as opposed to a trick mode, separately producing “n” respective sub-results by computing a hash for each of the “n” sub-portions of the “must see” content, descrambling each one of a first “n” sub-portions of the series of sub-portions of the “dependent” content utilizing a respective one of the “n” sub-results, and descrambling each one of the remaining sub-portions of the series of sub-portions of the “dependent” content, utilizing a sub-result that is different from an immediately preceding sub-result utilized to descramble an immediately preceding sub-portion in the series so that each sub-portion in the series is descrambled; and if the “must see” content is not played back in the normal mode, preventing the “dependent” content from being descrambled.