Sony preps blockchain solution for rights management

Sony is developing a rights management system for digital content that utilises blockchain technology.

The project is a joint endeavour with Sony Music Entertainment Japan and Sony Global Education and is based on a previously developed system for authenticating, sharing, and rights management of educational data.

A statement issued by the company notes that: “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 organisations or the creators themselves, necessitating a more efficient way of managing and demonstrating ownership of copyright-related information for written works.”

The new system is specialised 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.

Booting up this system will also automatically verify the rights generation of a piece of written works, which has conventionally proven difficult. It also lends itself to the rights management of various types of digital content including electronic textbooks and other educational content, music, films, VR content, and e-books.

It can be utilised to manage educational materials and other forms of content used in the field of education, and Sony Global Education is considering its possible commercialisation as a service.

Sony Group is also considering ways to make use of blockchain technology for information management and data distribution in a host of different fields.