Patent ID: 8838500

Claim:
A method of reproducing digital data using a digital data reproducing device, the method comprising: reading degraded data, comprising digital data that has been degraded in advance; detecting copyright management information embedded in the degraded data, wherein detecting copyright management information includes detecting a permissible number of reproduction times and a cumulative number of reproduction times, wherein the cumulative number of reproduction times represents a number of times that the degraded data has been reproduced; decreasing degradation of the degraded data using a data degradation alleviating unit based on the copyright management information; reproducing the degraded data by using a digital data reproducing unit, wherein the degradation has been decreased; comparing the cumulative number of reproduction times with the permissible number of reproduction times using a comparison unit; updating the copyright management information, wherein updating the copyright management information comprises updating the cumulative number of reproduction times; embedding the updated copyright management information into the degraded data; and writing into a storage medium the degraded data where the copyright management information has been updated.