Patent ID: 7539737

Claim:
A method for awarding points to users, comprising: receiving a transmission of a disc identification stored on a disc storage medium, wherein the disc identification is unique to and permanently associated with the disc storage medium; receiving a transmission of a user identification from a user console, wherein the user identification is unique to a user interacting with the disc storage medium; comparing the transmitted disc identification and user identification with a previously stored combination of disc and user identifications in order to determine that the user interacting with the disc storage medium is not the owner of the disc storage medium; authorizing a user of the user console as identified by the user identification to execute software residing on the disc storage medium; and awarding points to the owner of the disc storage medium for activities relating to the disc storage medium having been shared with another user as identified by the received user identification, wherein the award points are added to a user table associated with the user identification of the owner of the disc storage medium only if the transmitted user identification matches a disc identification stored in a table corresponding to authorized users of the disc storage medium.