Patent ID: 7827613

Claim:
A digital rights management (DRM) system for a client device implementing an object-oriented Runtime Environment (RE) comprising a Virtual Machine (VM) and object-oriented runtime libraries components, said RE capable of executing a player application for presenting content downloaded or streamed from a content server to a user, said system comprising: a) an acquisition component for receiving downloaded or streamed protected contents that have been encrypted; a 1 ) a memory; and b) a dynamic rights management layer running on a computer for receiving requests to view or play said protected contents from said player application, and comprising a protocol handler component for decrypting said protected contents, and, in response to each request, determining the rights associated with said protected contents that the user has acquired according to a rights policy and accessing said components for enabling viewing or playing of said protected contents via said player application if permitted according to said rights, wherein digital rights management functionality is assured in a manner transparent to said user and without the need for a specialized application, wherein the protocol handler component is associated with a protocol indicated by name of uniform resource locator (URL) of the protected content being accessed and the protocol handler decrypts rights files to obtain a set of rights associated with said user by resolving the resource URL in order to determine a content filename (CF) and the content map (CM) of that resource, decrypting said content map using a hidden private key, utilizing the CM to map the CF into a corresponding rights file (RF) and corresponding decryption key assigned to individual content items, and decrypting the RF using the hidden private key.