Abstract: Systems and methods for providing digital rights management services are disclosed. Such a system includes a service program that provides a processing framework for performing a digital rights management service, such as publishing or licensing rights managed digital content. A plurality of plug-in components are provided, each of which performs a respective task associated with the digital rights management service. The plug-in components are integrated into the processing framework according to predefined sets of interface rules.

Abstract: In a system for distributing and licensing rights-managed digital content, the way in which content is distributed and licensed can be affected by the trust relationships that are established between the various servers that participate in the system. In a typical system, a license server licenses content to particular identities, and an identity server defines those identities by issuing certificates for those identities. The license server issues licenses to identities that have been issued by trusted identity servers. Also, the license server can issue a license on behalf of any entity whose private key it holds. Thus, in one embodiment, the universe of people to whom the license server can issue licenses can be expanded by adding new identity servers to the list of trusted identity servers. In another embodiment, exceptions to the general trust of an identity server can be carved out by creating an exclusion list, which excludes particular identity certificate (e.g.