The DRM- Blockchain dilemma

Digital Rights Management — the sentry of the entertainment industry that uses software to bring accountability to the ownership and distribution of creative content. Certain sections of the industry argue that it is imperative to prevent intellectual property from being copied freely, just as physical locks are required to prevent personal property from being stolen; almost an artistic control if you will. 

The cost and complexity of the technology ranges anywhere from multi layered encryption and real time key validation to the simple act of adding a watermark to a piece of digital content. For certain sections of high risk digital content — primarily movies, TV shows and video games, there are multiple layers of encryption, access validation and credential verification before the digital content is accessible to the end user. This validation and logging of data is an expensive and cumbersome process.

Blockchain

Blockchain burst into the mainstream with the first peer-peer distributed ledger cryptocurrency — Bitcoin (BTC). With only a handful of blockchain applications being hesitantly accepted by the industry, the scope for the application of this technology to a wider domain is large. Blockchain technology is attractive to a number of industries because of the primary principles it was built on:

• Decentralization 
• Immutability

Decentralization shifts the focus from a single server to a whole host of servers connected over a peer-peer network. This prevents the loss of data in case a centralized server goes down. Since the entirety of the data is stored on a number of server nodes and distributed across a peer-peer network, the data cannot be tampered with and hence is immutable. Coincidentally, both of these functionalities are essential requirements for the development of a DRM software. The loss of access to purchased content for thousands of users due to the suspension of Yahoo Music services could have been prevented by a distributed peer-peer file storage and the holy grail of DRM is to log and control every instance of file access and distribution. Perfect, right? 

Well, atleast Sony thinks so!

Based on the press release put out in October of last year, Sony has invested in DRM technology for the management of various types of digital content including electronic textbooks and other educational content, music, films, VR content, and e-books. This statement has sparked a massive debate on the Sony’s decision and the general applicability of decentralized blockchain technology to DRM. 

For starts, Sony is no stranger to DRM. Based on reports, Sony has invested heavily in blockchain technology and currently holds over 20 patents including technology to authenticate user data and manage education data. However, the finer details on using blockchain as an actual DRM are still not in the open. The bone of contention here is the actual, tangible benefit of using a distributed ledger for the management of copyright material. With the current information on DRM available in the public domain, using a blockchain for DRM has no inherent advantages over a centralized database i.e. the validation of user credentials and maintaining access logs. 

Thought it is unclear how blockchain technology can still be used as a tool for the management of copyright material, it could be used very effectively as a tool for maintaining a decentralized ledger of licences linked to copyright material. This could solve the problem that users faced when Yahoo Music was faced with the shutdown of the centralized single point server. On the flipside, a decentralized blockchain gives mining groups the ability to mine data and transfer or even sell licences unlawfully. 

If Sony responds by creating a closed blockchain, this goes back to the most fundamental prerequisite for a blockchain to be decentralized and not closed which negates the entire argument for using blockchain and not a database.

But all said and done, until Sony gets down to the nitty gritty and makes their grand plans crystal clear, all we can do is speculate. You never know, maybe Sony has a fantastic new piece of technology that solves all of the highlighted problems... but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I was you. 

I’m going to end this piece with a quote from Mr Deepak Lalan — Accenture’s Blockchain Practice Leader for India, whom I had the pleasure of interacting with a week ago.

“Before we rush headlong into adopting blockchain, we’ve got to ask ourselves twice, thrice or even five times over if this exponential technology will actually improve how we currently do things. For the moment, the answer is mostly a no.”