Patent ID: 8261060

Claim:
A content transmitting apparatus, comprising: an acquisition device configured to acquire content data distributed in streaming mode; a temporary storage device configured to store temporarily the content data acquired by said acquisition device; a data control device configured to read the content data from said temporary storage device on a first-in first-out basis; an encryption device configured to encrypt in units of a predetermined amount the content data read out by said data control device; and a transmission device configured to transmit the content data encrypted by said encryption device to a predetermined receiving apparatus via a network; wherein, if the remaining capacity of said temporary storage device becomes smaller than a predetermined threshold value depending on status of said network, then said data control device discards the content data read from said temporary storage device by deleting the content data from the temporary storage device without transmitting the content data to the predetermined receiving apparatus, the data control device discarding the content data one frame at a time if the content data is in MPEG-2 format, and the data control device discarding the content data one unit of data as encrypted by the encryption device if the content data is not in MPEG-2 format.