Patent ID: 6850963

Claim:
An information service providing method for providing an information service, comprising the steps of: receiving a customer's request for said information service to be provided with; deciding the customer's utilization qualification with respect to the contents of said information service; determining the contents that is available to the customer according to the customer's utilization qualification among said contents of said information service that the customer requests to be provided with; displaying information as a list, the information showing correspondence relationships between services that the customer can utilize and a plurality of utilization qualifications with respect to the services; receiving an instruction from the customer selecting a utilization qualification with respect to the services being displayed; determining to impose a limitation regarding a period of utilization of old-version software if the utilization qualification contained in the instruction received is a voluntary member: determining to impose a limitation regarding a period of utilization of latest-version software if the utilization qualification contained in the instruction received is a regular member; and providing the customer with a service of a content thus determined.