Techniques for distributing and monitoring content

1 . A system, including:

content media; and

an authentication service;

wherein the content media includes an identifier separated from content residing on the media that uniquely identifies the content and the content media, and wherein the identifier is acquired when the content media is interfaced to a machine and supplied to the authentication service, the authentication service is to authenticate the identifier and supply an access key to the machine for playing the content.

2 . The system of claim 1 further including, a media player, wherein the media player is to play the content on the machine if the access key is acquired from the authentication service.

3 . The system of claim 1 further including, an alert service, wherein the alert service is to alert a reporting service if the authentication service does not authenticate the identifier.

4 . The system of claim 1 further including, a license service, wherein the license service communicates with the authentication service to enforce a license associated with the content and the identifier.

5 . The system of claim 1 further including, an authentication controller, wherein the authentication controller initially acquires the identifier and encrypts the identifier and transmits the encrypted identifier to the authentication service for authentication.

6 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the authentication controller receives the access key from the authentication service in an encrypted format and decrypts the access key and supplies the decrypted access key to a media player that uses the access key to play the content on the machine.

7 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the identifier is embedded in an unused portion of the content media or embedded in a radio frequency identification tag affixed to the content media as a label.

8 . A machine accessible medium having instructions thereon, the instructions when accessed by a machine perform the method of, including:

acquiring an identifier from content media;

communicating the identifier to an authentication service; and

requesting an access key from the authentication service.

9 . The method of claim 8 further including instructions for:

receiving the access key from the authentication service; and

providing the access key to a media player to play content embedded on the content media.

10 . The method of claim 8 further including instructions for:

receiving a denial from the authentication service; and

presenting a notification that content embedded on the content media cannot be played.

11 . The method of claim 8 further instructions for:

receiving the access key from the authentication service; and

copying content embedded on the content media to memory or storage off of the content media in response to the access key.

12 . The method of claim 8 , wherein communicating further includes encrypting the identifier before communicating the identifier to the authentication service.

13 . The method of claim 8 , wherein acquiring includes at least one of:

receiving the identifier from a radio frequency identifier (RFI) reader, wherein the identifier is a RFI tag that uniquely identifies content embedded in the content media and the content media; and

receiving the identifier from a memory or storage of a machine, wherein the identifier is recorded in the memory or the storage from a chip that is activated by the machine when the content media is interfaced to the machine.

14 . A method, including:

receiving a content identifier from a requestor that desires to play content embedded on content media, wherein the content identifier is embedded or affixed to the content media and is separate from the content residing on the media;

attempting to authenticate the content identifier in response to a policy associated with the content; and

communicating an access key to the requestor if the content identifier is authenticated successfully, otherwise communicating a denial notification to the requestor.

15 . The method of claim 14 , wherein receiving further includes decrypting the content identifier, which is received in an encrypted format.

16 . The method of claim 14 , wherein receiving further includes acquiring a geographic position for a machine of the requestor, and wherein the geographic position is evaluated in view of the policy to determine whether the content identifier is authenticated for the access key.

17 . The method of claim 16 , wherein acquiring further includes at least one of:

estimating the geographic position from an Internet Protocol (IP) address associated with the requestor; and

receiving the geographic position as a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) coordinate from a device associated with the requestor.

18 . The method of claim 14 further including, acquiring the policy from a licensing service, wherein the policy is associated with a license for the content and the policy is identified by the content identifier.

19 . The method of claim 14 further including, alerting a reporting service if the content identifier is not authenticated.

20 . The method of claim 14 further including:

receiving the content identifier from a second requestor or from the same requestor;

determining if the policy permits concurrent play of the content; and

communicating a different access key if the policy permits, otherwise denying the concurrent play.