Patent ID: 8244703

Claim:
An information processing apparatus, comprising: means for acquiring a download of information contents from a first information processing apparatus, the download of said information contents having a price, the first information processing apparatus incrementing a download count upon the download, means for holding said information contents acquired by said means for acquiring; means for reproducing content data, based on said information contents held by said means for holding; and means for transmitting a notification to a second information processing apparatus upon a reproduction, based on said information contents, of said content data by said means for reproducing, said notification information indicating a number of times that said content data has been reproduced based on said information contents by said means for reproducing, a price for a subsequent download of said information contents being computed, after a transmission of the notification, as a nonlinear function of the download count, and the information number of times; wherein the price for the subsequent download of said information contents is based on a ratio of the number of times to the download count; wherein the nonlinear function is based on a linear function of the ratio of the download count to the number of times; and wherein the price for the subsequent download of said information contents is computed as a function of a square root of a value, the value being a function of the ratio of the download count to the number of times.