Patent ID: 7716324

Claim:
A method for identifying a digital content distributor on a file sharing network, comprising: initiating a content search by submitting a search request to the file sharing network, the search request comprising one or more keywords; receiving a result of the content search, the result including a suspect file that comprises a plurality of file segments; downloading each of the file segments by: initiating a download of a selected file segment of the suspect file via a specific external identifier on the file sharing network; storing the selected file segment received from the file sharing network; and recording segment attribute information for the selected file segment, the segment attribute information including source information and a file sharing protocol for the selected file segment; utilizing the source information to determine a distributor for each of the file segments; determining whether the distributor is utilizing a second file sharing protocol; logging the determination whether the distributor is utilizing the second file sharing protocol; and combining the stored file segments to form a digital copy of the suspect file.