Portion-level digital rights management (DRM) in digital content is described. In one or more embodiments, a selection of a portion of the digital content is received at a computing device. Then, a policy is assigned to the selected portion by adding a markup element with an identifier to the selected portion. Based on the assigned policy, the selected portion is encrypted without encrypting another portion of the digital content. Subsequently, access to the selected portion is controlled based on the policy independently of the other portion. In this way, different portions of a single document can be protected with different policies. Different users may then have access to different portions of the digital content based on their user ID being associated with a particular policy, which improves security and management of distributable digital content.