Delivering, protecting, and playing content, including: executing a content-bound executable application in a trusted execution environment by a player device; performing an integrity check of the player device using the content-bound executable application; sending a request from the player device for update information to at least one of the license server and the content server using the content-bound executable application; receiving update information at the player device from the at least one of the license server and the content server; updating local environment of the player device using the content-bound executable application; and decrypting the content data by the content-bound executable application. Key words include content-bound and executable.