Patent ID: 7822685

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, by a DRM Broker computer, original content to be protected with a predetermined DRM (Digital Rights Management) scheme; identifying a publisher from a plurality of different publishers by inspecting the original content prior to a first DRM encryption, the identified publisher being associated with the original content; comparing the identified publisher to a key-escrow database, the key-escrow database mapping the plurality of different publishers to different DRM encryption formats and associating the different DRM encryption formats with one or more of a plurality of encryption keys; selecting a first DRM encryption format based on an identity of the identified publisher; transcoding the original content, at the DRM Broker computer using the selected first DRM encryption format, the transcoding producing a first DRM encrypted instance of the original content; selecting a second DRM encryption format according to the comparison of the identified publisher to the key-escrow database, wherein the second DRM encryption format is different from the first DRM encryption format; additionally transcoding the original content, at the DRM Broker computer using the second DRM encryption format, the additional transcoding producing a second different DRM encrypted instance of the original content; tracking encryption keys selected from the plurality of encryption keys associated with each of the first and second DRM encryption formats; and attaching, by the DRM Broker computer, meta-data to the first DRM encrypted instance of the original content and the second DRM encrypted instances of the original content, the meta-data including: an identity of the DRM broker computer conducting the transcodings and an identity of the key-escrow database.