Patent ID: 7254837

Claim:
A method for handling an expressive work of digital content that has been divided into a plurality of shreds, wherein each shred is a subset of the digital content, the subset having a predetermined size, and wherein each shred has been encrypted to form a piece of shredded and encrypted digital content, wherein the pieces of shredded and encrypted digital content are organized into a plurality of records that hold the shredded and encrypted digital content in a database associated with a server computer system, the method comprising: sending a request to the server computer system for the digital content that has been organized into the plurality of records in the database associated with the server; based on a response from the server, receiving the plurality of records that hold the shredded and encrypted digital content from the server into a client computer system; decrypting the received plurality of records that hold the shredded and encrypted digital content using a decryption algorithm to form a decrypted version of the expressive work; and wherein each of the plurality of records includes at least one first data structure that includes: (a descriptor that includes a unique value used to determine a record identity within a table; a descriptor including a join value; a descriptor that includes the number of chunks in each record; a descriptor representing a predetermined size for each chunk; and a descriptor that includes actual shredded and encrypted content derived based on the descriptor that includes the predetermined size for each chunk).