METHOD, SYSTEM, AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING SECURE ACCESS TO A DIGITAL WORK

A method, system, and apparatus are provided for securely accessing a digital work, such as digital movie, music file, photo, or other type of digital media. Provider contexts, requester contexts, and exporting contexts exchange logic statements as defined by a distributed logic-based programming language. Logic statements may define trust, delegation, and other security relationships. Decisions regarding access to a digital work are made by a provider context based upon locally stored logic statements and other logic statements imported from other contexts. If the logic statements satisfy a security policy, also defined in terms of logic statements, access is granted to the digital work. Otherwise, access to the digital work is denied.