Methods and systems are described that enable protection of digital content, such as movies and the like, by making pirated copies traceable back to a unique decryption key that was utilized to decrypt the originally encrypted content. The innovative advancements do not rely on post-distribution watermarking or fingerprinting techniques, and yet intrinsically link any unauthorized copies back to a unique cryptographic key or key collection that was used when the genuine copy was reproduced. In an example, when a content player decrypts its associated key collection and uses the key collection to decrypt the digital content, the version of the digital content that is decrypted points directly to the specific content-player that was authorized to decrypt it with that key collection.