Patent ID: 8819421

Claim:
A method that facilitates digital rights management, the method comprising: receiving an encrypted file including metadata comprising encrypted key material, wherein the encrypted file is encrypted using continuous block encryption; decrypting the metadata to obtain the key material related to the encrypted file; receiving a request to open the encrypted file from an application, wherein the request to open the encrypted file comprises the key material and the key material includes a key length; generating, in response to the request to open the encrypted file, a file handle referencing the encrypted file; associating the encrypted key material related to the encrypted file with the file handle for use in file I/O operations so that the file I/O operations do not require the key material as a parameter of the file I/O operations; and performing the file I/O operations as a function of the file handle and the associated encrypted key material, wherein performing the file I/O operations includes: receiving a file read request from the application using the file handle; obtaining data from the encrypted file as a function of the read request; decrypting the obtained data on a block-by-block basis as a function of the encrypted key material associated with the file handle; and providing the decrypted data to the application in response to the read request.