Patent ID: 8739299

Claim:
A method performed by a content unlocking apparatus configured to selectively unlock digital content, said method comprising: (a) extracting medium identification information from a request for unlocking digital content on a storage medium, the request having been received through an information network from a content reproduction apparatus for reproducing the content from the storage medium; (b) identifying at least one validation data sector of the storage medium based on the medium identification information extracted in step (a); (c) requesting, through the information network, data to be read by the content reproduction apparatus from the at least one validation data sector identified in step (b) by the content unlocking apparatus based on the medium identification information extracted in step (a) by the content unlocking apparatus; (d) comparing data received as a result of the requesting step to original validation data corresponding to the data requested from the at least one validation data sector; (e) when the data received as a result of the requesting step correlates to at least a predetermined amount of the original validation data, unlocking the digital content on the storage medium and allowing the content reproduction apparatus to reproduce the unlocked digital content and unlocking, and allowing the content reproduction apparatus to reproduce additional content different from the digital content.