Method and apparatus for secure contents transfer and copyright protection

摘要

In an information processing system in which a range of information transfer between communication devices through a network is limited within a prescribed range by registering unique information obtainable within the prescribed range into each device and permitting information transfer between devices which share common unique information, where the unique Information is formed by a pair of a public unique information and a secret unique information, a bridge device is controlled such that, upon receiving a proxy check request from a reception device, whether a transmission device is another bridge device or not is judged when the public unique information registered by the reception device is registered in the bridge device and one public unique information registered in the bridge device is registered by the transmission device. Then, the secret unique Information registered by the reception device is transmitted to the transmission device when the transmission device is not another bridge device. <IMAGE>