Patent ID: 7278153

Claim:
A process of propagating viewing assets to a system of video servers, the process comprising: generating a propagation priority for a selected viewing asset that comprises a set of asset elements, each asset element of the set comprising a segment of multimedia data, the propagation priority representing a predicted economic value of propagating the selected viewing asset to a target video server, the propagation priority comprising a first priority associated with the viewing asset and a second priority associated with the target video server; generating a retention value for each replica of a viewing asset presently stored on the target video server, each retention value representing a predicted economic value of retaining the asset replica on the target video server, each asset replica comprising a set of asset element replicas stored on the target video server; generating a set of element deletion lists, each element deletion list identifying a set of asset element replicas that comprise a set of asset replicas presently stored on the target video server and capable of being removed from the target video server as a group, each element deletion list being associated with a sum of retention values associated with the corresponding set of asset replicas; selecting one or more element deletion lists having a data size at least as large as a data size of one or more asset elements of the selected viewing asset; comparing the propagation priority of the selected viewing asset against the sum of retention values associated with the one or more selected element deletion lists; and copying the one or more asset elements of the selected viewing asset to the target video server in response to determining that the propagation priority of the selected viewing asset exceeds the sum of retention values of the one or more selected element deletion lists.