Patent ID: 7310821

Claim:
A method of authenticating a host to receive content from a media player, the method comprising: receiving at the media player a certificate from the host, the certificate including a plurality of fields, including a field holding a digital signature from a certifying authority, the certificate also including data, wherein the data in the certificate specifies one or more of a product category, a product line, a model, a revision and a serial number of the host; verifying the digital signatures in the certificate, the verifying including at least one of: verifying the certifying authority digital signature using the certifying authority public key; and verifying a host digital signature using a host public key; receiving validation data from a source; comparing the data in the certificate to the validation data from the source to identify as valid or invalid one or more of the product category, a product line, the model, the revision and the serial number of the host; if the digital signatures are verified and the validation data is validated, generating a random number at the media player to form a session key and encrypting the session key with a public key extracted from the certificate to form an encrypted session key and transmitting the encrypted session key to the host; at the host, decrypting the encrypted session key using a host private key to recover the session key; at the media player, encrypting a content key using the session key to provide an encrypted content key; at the host, receiving an encrypted content key from a media player; decrypting the encrypted content key using the session key to recover the content key; at the media player, retrieving encrypted content from a media; transmitting the encrypted content to the host; and at the host, decrypting the encrypted content using the content key.