Patent ID: 8868666

Claim:
A media aggregator, comprising: a plurality of interfaces, at least one of the plurality of interfaces being configured to couple to a local network; at least one processor coupled to the plurality of interfaces, the processor operable to: identify a presence of a first device on the local network and cause, over the local network, a crawler process to operate on the first device; access the first device coupled to the local network and catalog media content files stored on the first device, each of the cataloged media content files stored on the accessed first device being associated with previously-granted access rights; access a second device and catalog media content files stored on the second device, each of the cataloged media content files stored on the accessed second device being associated with previously-granted access rights; populate a media aggregator database with references to and with the previously-granted access rights associated with the media content files cataloged in the first and second devices; receive a request to access the media aggregator by an accessing device, the request comprising an identifier that is unique to the accessing device; responsive to the received request, select a subset of the populated media aggregator database based on the previously-granted access rights and the identifier of the accessing device; and present contents of the selected subset of the populated media aggregator database to the accessing device to enable the device to access to the media content files referred to in the selected subset of the media aggregator database.