Patent ID: 7805374

Claim:
A local media inventory control, distribution and destruction system, comprising: means for receiving and storing content from a content source; means for uploading sales information from the local media inventory control, distribution and destruction system over a network to a remote central database, the uploaded sales information based on local customer interaction with the media inventory control, distribution and destruction system; means for downloading a request from the remote central database for a particular inventory level of portable copies of the stored content, the particular inventory level based at least in part on uploads from other remote media inventory control, distribution and destruction systems to the remote central database over the same or another network, wherein the particular inventory level is based at least in part on remote customer interaction with the remote media inventory control, distribution and destruction systems; and means for maintaining a local inventory level of portable copies of the stored content according to the particular inventory level, the local inventory maintained by generating new portable copies of the stored content as needed to meet the particular inventory level and by destroying existing portable copies of the stored content as needed to meet the particular inventory level; wherein the system maintains the local inventory of the portable copies of the content based at least in part on purchasing and demand information fed back to the remote central database from the other media inventory control, distribution and destruction systems.