A copyright information management system supporting the management and
protection of products comprised of digitalized multimedia content in a
product distribution environment. The copyright information management
system (10) provides a copyright information management center (11),
provided in a product distribution environment (15) where products are
distributed through communications lines (14) between a product provider
(12) including at least one of a copyright owner and distributor and a
product user (13) receiving the product, for exchanging information
relating to the products through the communications lines (14). The
copyright information management center (11) centrally manages all
copyright information through the communications lines (14) by
preregistering copyright information relating to the individual products
in the center (11).