Abstract: This patent presents a method, apparatus and system for content protection and copyright management in digital video distribution over packet-based networks. The system consists of a distribution server and its agents. The distribution server first divides a digital video into parts and then processes them into public and control portions. The public and control portions are constructed in such a way that the public portion consists of the majority of the digital video while the control portion consists of only a small fraction of the video and other crucial information for restoring the video to its original format. The public portion is freely distributed without much restriction. In the absence of the control portion, the public portion cannot be decoded for video displaying. Thus, the control portion is delivered to an agent at a premise of authorized subscribers or viewers via a packet-based interactive secured channel at the time of restoring the full-length video content for displaying.