Sony Pursuing Blockchain for Digital Rights in Entertainment
Sony have filed a U.S. Patent to use blockchain for digital rights in entertainment and more.
The concept of the Patent, filed jointly with subsidiary Sony Pictures Entertainment, is to use the security that blockchain offers for copyrighted materials, to develop a digital rights management (DRM) solution.
DRM systems use technologies to manage the access to copyrighted materials, limiting it to only those who purchase.
As a global leader in the entertainment industry, with Playstation and Sony Music as major players, these developments could mark huge changes for their distribution process of film, music and games.
In the submitted document, Sony uses ‘movies’ as an example, suggesting that a blockchain system could be applied to store the required ‘identification information’ to ensure users could watch only the products they purchase.
Further to this, the Patent describes how their system could manage the rights to:
“various types of content or other data, such as movies, television, video, music, audio, games, scientific data, medical data, etc.”
The Japanese technology giant has been actively looking at blockchain technology for some time, and have filed a number of patents in the U.S. mostly pertaining to the authentication of user data and blockchain for digital rights .
Indeed, Sony have already developed an educational blockchain solution on the IBM Hyperledger platform, to secure and share student records . It is due to launch this year via its subsidiary Sony Global Education.
