WRITEABLE MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL USING A MEDIUM WRITEABLE AREA

摘要

An optical medium (112) uses a single structure or format (such as identical materials, layers and the like) for both a region for holding information content-mastered data and a writeable area (118, 126, 128). In one aspect, a writeable region (118, 128) of a medium (112) with information content-mastered data is used in connection with paying, collecting or accounting for usage or royalties for proprietary intellectual property embodied in or associated with the content. In one embodiment, a key permitting access to some or all of the content, preferably when combined with a disk serial number, is stored in the writeable area (118, 128), which is preferably user-inaccessible.