Digital media is any data presented in a machine-readable format. It includes digital images, digital video, MP3 audio, electronic books, video games and databases. The anti-counterfeiting technologies designed for use with digital media essentially consist of different methods for embedding and identifying information in digital files, computers and electronic devices so as to protect, identify and track their intellectual property content.

There are four types of anti-counterfeiting technologies for digital media which fall into two main categories: digital rights management (DRM) systems and automatic content recognition technologies. 

DRM systems are designed to combat large-scale counterfeiting of audiovisual works. They are used by copyright and other associated rights holders to protect, exercise and manage their rights in the digital environment. 

Automatic content recognition technologies in general aim to identify content that is in a media file or being played on a device. They are developed for a variety of purposes, intellectual property protection being just one of them. The automatic content recognition technologies that can be used to secure digital media against counterfeiting are digital watermarks, hashing and fingerprinting. They respectively incorporate, calculate and generate information related to specific digital content (text, image, sound, video) that can subsequently be detected or extracted in order to identify its nature, origin and source.