Entertainment giant Sony has just announced the development of a blockchain-based system to handle digital rights management (DRM) of its digital content.

The system builds upon a previous platform that handles authenticating, sharing and rights management for Sony Global Education. The new system will also incorporate functionality for processing rights-related information. It opens the way for Sony to track music, videos, films, books, gaming and VR content on the blockchain, forging an immutable ledger.

Traditionally, companies and content creators are responsible for tracking the rights management of their content, from creation to sharing. By using blockchain technology, creators can automate and streamline the process without requiring a centralized or manual monitoring mechanism.

Sony maps out how the new system will work.

“This newly-developed system 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 addition to the creation of electronic data, booting up this system will automatically verify the rights generation of a piece of written works, which has conventionally proven difficult. Furthermore, the system 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.”

This is one of several moves in recent weeks by major corporations that are integrating blockchain technology. Walmart recently adopted blockchain tech to track their produce, while Major League Baseball teams are giving away crypto online.