SYSTEM FOR MANAGING A PLURALITY OF MULTIPURPOSE MEDIA ACCESS DATA PROCESSING SYSTEMS

摘要

The present invention provides an environment for managing accounts between an internet service provider, such as a telephone company, and a plurality of low cost multipurpose, internet-connectable computing devices. The environment uses a unique ID that is associated with every computing device to validate whether the device service provider to make the determination of whether a device is a valid system based upon a plurality of criteria including whether payment for the multipurpose media access device is up to date, whether the device has been reported stolen, whether there are duplicate copies of the same device (thus indicating that unapproved copies of software have been made), whether the location which the device is establishing the connection corresponds to an expected location.