Publishing digital content within a defined universe such as an organization in accordance with a digital rights management (DRM) system

A licensor receives a request from a requestor including an identifier identifying the requestor and rights data associated with digital content, where the rights data lists at least one identifier and rights associated therewith. The licensor thereafter locates the identifier of the requestor in a directory, and locates in the directory based thereon an identifier of each group which the requestor is a member of. Each of the located requestor identifier and each located group identifier is compared to each identifier listed in the rights data to find a match, and a digital license to render the content is issued to the requestor with the rights associated with the matching identifier.