Sony Develops Blockchain System for Digital Rights Management

The development of a blockchain-based tool for the management of the rights to intellectual property such as music, videos, and written works.

According to Computer Business Review, the company already has a similar system.

In place specifically for authenticating, sharing, and rights management of educational data.

No technical details for its rights management system were revealed in Sony's Monday release, but it may be built in a similar fashion.

"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."

The new system will include features that record the date and time and electronic data gets created in a "Difficult to falsify way," as well as automatically verify the rights generated by a piece of written work on boot-up.

Sony made $870 million in profit on music sales alone in the past financial year and recently changed its approach for paying royalties, reportedly compensating partner labels and artists from its Spotify shareholding this past summer.

This new rights management system appears to be a mother bid by Sony to stay ahead of an entertainment landscape constantly changing in the wake of increased online access and individual capability.

"This newly developed system can be utilized to manage educational materials and other forms of content used in the field of education, and Sony Global Education is considering its possible commercialization as a service."

Ethereum-based London company essenceProtocol is built to compensate musicians based on how many times their work gets redistributed by its users.