Patent ID: 7562396

Claim:
A method for authenticating a digital medium comprising: requesting, at a computing device, a read operation of data symbols from a media reading device; monitoring a transfer rate of read user data from an output of the media reading device to the computing device resulting from the reading of data symbols stored on a digital medium installed on the media reading device at a physical location of the digital medium, wherein the read user data is in a format that can be processed by the computing device and wherein the transfer rate is a rate, in data elements per unit time, at which read user data elements are returned from the media reading device to the computing device in response to the requesting of the read operation; determining, at the computing device, from the monitored transfer rate, the presence of an anomaly region on the digital medium corresponding to the physical location of the data symbols on the digital medium by identifying a modification in the transfer rate of the read user data from the media device to the computing device; and authenticating the digital medium based on a characteristic of the anomaly region.