A method for multiple level control of access privileges to protected media content, said method comprising: associating first data with media content, wherein different versions of said media content are produced using said first data, each of said different versions comprising one or more portions of said media content, said one or more portions selected using said first data, said different versions possess respective scalable attributes; associating second data with said different versions, said second data identifying respective protection attributes used to encrypt said different versions, wherein said respective protection attributes correspond to respective keys that provide respective levels of access to said media content; and transmitting the protected media content to a downstream client device, wherein a key at the downstream client device is used to access at least one of the different version of the protected content corresponding to a level of end user access, wherein associating first data with media content and associating second data with said different versions comprises: receiving at an encoder residing in a content source input data accessed by the content source, the input data corresponding to the protected media content, values of scalable attributes (SPi), and values of protection attributes (PPi) that are associated with designated levels of end user access; and outputting by the encoder scalable encoded protected media content, scalable profile data and protection profile data to be accessed by a downstream client device, and wherein the scalable profile data includes scalable attribute values (SPi) cross referenced to segments of data, such that for each of the values of scalable attributes (SPi) corresponding data segments within the encoded data are identified, and such that the encoded data can be scaled without requiring knowledge of the encoding scheme employed, wherein the protection profile data includes a cross-reference of the protection attribute values and corresponding data segments, such that the protection profile data includes enough information to relate a value of a protection attribute with one or more data segments. associating first data with media content, wherein different versions of said media content are produced using said first data, each of said different versions comprising one or more portions of said media content, said one or more portions selected using said first data, said different versions possess respective scalable attributes; associating second data with said different versions, said second data identifying respective protection attributes used to encrypt said different versions, wherein said respective protection attributes correspond to respective keys that provide respective levels of access to said media content; and transmitting the protected media content to a downstream client device, wherein a key at the downstream client device is used to access at least one of the different version of the protected content corresponding to a level of end user access, wherein associating first data with media content and associating second data with said different versions comprises: receiving at an encoder residing in a content source input data accessed by the content source, the input data corresponding to the protected media content, values of scalable attributes (SPi), and values of protection attributes (PPi) that are associated with designated levels of end user access; and outputting by the encoder scalable encoded protected media content, scalable profile data and protection profile data to be accessed by a downstream client device, and wherein the scalable profile data includes scalable attribute values (SPi) cross referenced to segments of data, such that for each of the values of scalable attributes (SPi) corresponding data segments within the encoded data are identified, and such that the encoded data can be scaled without requiring knowledge of the encoding scheme employed, wherein the protection profile data includes a cross-reference of the protection attribute values and corresponding data segments, such that the protection profile data includes enough information to relate a value of a protection attribute with one or more data segments. receiving at an encoder residing in a content source input data accessed by the content source, the input data corresponding to the protected media content, values of scalable attributes (SPi), and values of protection attributes (PPi) that are associated with designated levels of end user access; and outputting by the encoder scalable encoded protected media content, scalable profile data and protection profile data to be accessed by a downstream client device, and wherein the scalable profile data includes scalable attribute values (SPi) cross referenced to segments of data, such that for each of the values of scalable attributes (SPi) corresponding data segments within the encoded data are identified, and such that the encoded data can be scaled without requiring knowledge of the encoding scheme employed, wherein the protection profile data includes a cross-reference of the protection attribute values and corresponding data segments, such that the protection profile data includes enough information to relate a value of a protection attribute with one or more data segments.