Patent ID: 7810163

Claim:
A method comprising: establishing one or more paths of components that are to process and render digital data; receiving encrypted data that is to be processed by the one or more paths, the encrypted data being subject to a license that defines how the encrypted data is to be processed; creating multiple authenticators to authenticate components along the one or more paths, at least one authenticator being created by a host device on one side of a device boundary and established across the device boundary on a remote device; providing a secure communication channel between the authenticators; querying, with the authenticators, individual components of the one or more paths to ascertain which components the queried components pass data to; attempting to authenticate, with the authenticators, the queried components and the components that the queried components pass data to; and establishing encryption/decryption keys with multiple components of the one or more paths for the components to use to encrypt and decrypt data.