Patent ID: 8234302

Claim:
A method for controlling access to electronic content, comprising: receiving a request to access the electronic content through a user account, wherein the request includes account identification and device identification, wherein the account identification corresponds to a unique account authorized to access the electronic content, and the device identification corresponds to a device used to access the content, and wherein the request is associated with a geographic area identifier and a request time; determining whether to provide access to the requested electronic content based on: (a) determining if the device identification is associated with the user account providing the request for content; if it is determined that the device identification is not associated with the user account, determining if a predetermined number of devices have previously accessed the electronic content through the user account, without determining whether the device has been pre-registered to access the electronic content; and denying access to the electronic content if it is determined that a predetermined number of devices have previously accessed the electronic content through the user account; and (b) determining if the geographic area identifier associated with the request for the electronic content is different from a geographic area identifier associated with a previous request to access a same portion of the electronic content; if it is determined that the geographic area identifiers are different, determining a time difference between the time associated with the request time for the electronic content at the geographic area and the request time associated with the previous request to access the same portion of the electronic content from the previous geographic area; and applying a set of rules to determine validity of the request to access the electronic content based on a processing of the total number of geographic areas exceeding a predetermined number of areas and the determined time difference between requests from the different geographic areas; wherein the method is implemented by at least one computing device.