130 would only download a particular content buffering to a single client computer and then let the requests be serviced just by client computers but the media server might participate in all downloads until it reached a threshold of capacity or other scheme of managing its capacity finally it will be obvious to the skilled practitioner that the p2p architecture is scalable to large numbers of client computers as suggested by the inclusion of a content buffering n 156 from peer media server 149 on client computer a 140 and that the efficiency of the p2p architecture in off loading download tasks from the media server 130 will increase as the number of client computers increases fig3 shows a block diagram of another embodiment of a system for managing the performance of digital media in networks in accordance with the present invention in this embodiment the system is adapted to function as an advertising financed broadcast system in fig3 the overall system is based on the p2p architecture described in fig2 however the embodiment described in fig3 could function equivalently in under the client server architecture described in fig1 in fig3 the process of granting licenses for performance of digital media 105 from a content rights owner 100 to a performance rights organization 110 as an agent which then grants a performance license 191 to a broadcaster 190 who broadcasts performances of digital media 105 to end users through a network to a plurality of client computers 140 p and 150 p is identical to that described in fig2 and fig1 equally the detailed interactive process by which the performance is authorized and distributed to the.