Patent ID: 7668939

Claim:
A method for disseminating resource information over a computer network, comprising: receiving, at a source entity, a consumer's request—via a recipient entity—for one or more parts of resource information, wherein the source entity comprises a media server that provides one or more resources, wherein each resource comprises its own resource information, wherein the resource information comprises a resource metadata part and a resource content part, wherein the resource content part comprises media content and the resource metadata part describes two sets of attributes of the resource content part wherein a first set of the resource metadata governs distribution of the resource metadata and a second set of the resource metadata governs distribution of the resource content and wherein the recipient entity comprises a consumer device; processing the request at the source entity to determine whether there exists at least one sharable folder that has been associated with the requesting recipient entity, and in the event that the at least one sharable folder exists, determining whether within the at least one sharable folder there are any resources designated as shareable over the network that meet the request and which satisfy at least one distribution criterion, wherein: in the event the requested one or more parts of resource information comprises resource metadata, the satisfaction of the at least one distribution criterion comprises selectively allowing or denying the consumer access to some or all of the requested resource metadata based on an association between the consumer's recipient entity and the requested resource metadata; in the event the requested one or more parts of resource information comprises resource content, the satisfaction of the at least one distribution criterion comprises selectively allowing or denying the consumer access to some or all of the requested resource content based on an association between the consumer's recipient entity and the requested resource content; generating a response that indicates the results of the processing; and forwarding the response to the consumer; in a first operation involving a first request: the processing includes determining whether any resources meet browse or search terms specified in the first request; and the response identifies resource metadata regarding at least one resource that meets the browse or the search terms, wherein the resource metadata includes a resource locator that describes where said at least one resource can be located; and in a second operation involving a second request: the processing includes determining whether any resources meet said resource locator, which is specified in the second request; and the response identifies resource content taken from at least one resource that meets the second request.