ENCRYPTION SCHEME FOR STREAMED MULTIMEDIA CONTENT PROTECTED BY RIGHTS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

A stream of content has multiple sub-streams, where each sub-stream comprises a part of the content and is divisible into logical blocks bounded by intrinsic partitions. For each sub-stream, a specification of the logical blocks bounded by the intrinsic partitions is defined and the sub-stream is divided into the logical blocks bounded by the intrinsic partitions. Each divided logical block is encrypted and then divided into one or more portions to produce corresponding pieces of data, and each piece of data is placed into a data packet as a payload thereof. Each data packet is transmitted to a recipient thereof, and the recipient can retrieve the pieces of data from the payloads of the packets, reconstruct the encrypted logical blocks, and manipulate the sub-stream on a per-logical block basis without necessarily decrypting each encrypted logical block.