A system and system is disclosed to protect media content via location-based data. Multimedia devices are equipped with locator devices, such as a GPS unit, or similar device. The multimedia devices preferably contain the device's International Mobile Equipment Identification (IMEI), and International Mobile Subscriber Identification (IMSI). When multimedia content is created on the multimedia device, such as image or sound files, the present invention encodes the multimedia content with location data from the locator device. Additionally, the multimedia device's IMEI and IMSI, as well as the time and the date, may be encoded onto the multimedia content. Under an alternate embodiment, a remote server performs the encoding of the multimedia content.