Sony Develops Blockchain-Based Rights Management System for Digital Content

Sony Corporation has announced the launch of a blockchain-based digital rights management system.

In a statement  released on its website, the company revealed that the new framework is built on a prior system for authenticating, sharing, and managing rights to educational data previously developed by Sony and Sony Global Education.

In April, CCN.com reported that Sony filed an application for a patent to store users’ digital rights data on the blockchain. In its patent application, Sony warned that “conventional solutions may not be very reliable and rely on one unique point of failure which could lead to the loss of all the acquired content.”

Blockchain-Enhanced Rights Management

Having recognised the gap in the digital rights management process that blockchain technology can solve, Sony then put into action its plan to develop a suitable system for digital content using blockchain technology. To this end the company filed an application for a patent to store users’ digital rights data on the blockchain on April 26 this year.

An excerpt from the statement reads:

“Today, advances in technologies for digital content creation allow anyone to broadcast and share content, but the rights management of that content is still carried out conventionally by industry organizations or the creators themselves, necessitating a more efficient way of managing and demonstrating ownership of copyright-related information for written works.”

In addition to the functionality of the earlier management system it is based on, this system also provides digital rights management for several new types of content including electronic textbooks and other educational content, music, films, audio, games, scientific data, medical data, VR content, and e-books.

In the statement Sony said:

“[It is] specialized for managing rights-related information of written works, with features for demonstrating the date and time that electronic data was created, leveraging the properties of blockchains to record verifiable information in a difficult to falsify way, and identifying previously recorded works, allowing participants to share and verify when a piece of electronic data was created and by whom.”

In so doing, Sony hopes to become a thought leader in the use of blockchain technology in the educational field through Sony Global Education and in data dispersal and management through Sony Group. The company also intends to continue to explore possible commercial avenues by piggybacking on the blockchain’s technological and commercial advancements.

Ultimately Sony says, the goal is to open up a new world of opportunities for blockchain technology in education and data and information management.

Featured image from Shutterstock.