Sony Wants to Use Blockchain for DRM

[AlphaAtlas]

Sony is officially jumping on the blockchain bandwagon. The company announced that it intends to integrate blockchain technology into their current DRM scheme for "electronic textbooks and other educational content, music, films, VR content, and e-books" and possibly more. We've noted that blockchain doesn't necessarily work with every problem, and the effective's of Sony's new DRM remains to be seen.

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. 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. As such, Sony is contemplating possible uses in a wide range of fields.

 

[squash]

Great idea! Except for basically every piece of how they'll implement it. A private blockchain where Sony has a "god" key will be no better for users than any other black box bullshit they might use now. It won't let you just move your game from one PC to another, it won't let you keep playing when Sony decides to stop providing authentication services, it won't let you sell your copy to a friend when you're done playing it. It won't let you securely communicate with servers and peers using high strength encryption made super stupidly easy by participants in a blockchain.

I mean, it could do all of those things. But it won't, because it's Sony,

 

[Dekoth-E-]

Because DRM has worked so well right? Apparently Sony hasn't figured out that the only thing DRM prevents is informed consumers buying your shit.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

At least it isn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

 

[jeffj7]

At least it isn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal

give them some time.

 

[Icon_Charlie]

Remember Kiddies it is all about control... In THEIR WORLD YOU DO NOT OWN ANYTHING... YOU ONLY LEASE IT!!! It's part of the New World Order to turn those have nots into meat bags of value and once you are not worth anything you are cast aside just like landfill. It has already have started. It's too bad most won't realize it until it is too late.

 

[BSmith]

I used to be a big Sony customer. Then they got so paranoid someone was going to steal from them they drove countless customers away with all the anti-xxx crap.

If I see the name "Sony" on something now, I put it back on the shelf. Does not matter what it is. I will not support a company who insists on treating loyal customers like they are all thieves.

 

[Nafensoriel]

We live in a world where people "must by x" because of popular culture. It might not be true for us old farts but look at your teenagers. Try to explain to them how your entire generation somehow managed to survive without the internet or cell phones.. Trust me the looks you get will both crush your optimism in humanity and make you laugh.

We, unfortunately, are moving into a world where we can convince people of anything using the mob mentality rules. Look at bottled water. No one wanted it. When it was released everyone thought it was absolutely stupid. Now we have an entire generation or two that thinks its great. Even if you produce the information that conclusively proves the resistance to bottled water the "common sense" mob mentality is that its something we all asked for rather than a very aggressive and clever marketing campaign that worked.

DRM is identical to bottled water. It's going to happen. Our kids are going to think it's perfectly acceptable and in fact, they will start to ask for it. Though in the end, it won't really change anything because there is no money in actually changing things anymore.

 

[Monkey34]

give them some time.

After I found out I had this crap on my PC, I dumped sony altogether.

 

[BSmith]

We live in a world where people "must by x" because of popular culture. It might not be true for us old farts but look at your teenagers. Try to explain to them how your entire generation somehow managed to survive without the internet or cell phones.. Trust me the looks you get will both crush your optimism in humanity and make you laugh.

We, unfortunately, are moving into a world where we can convince people of anything using the mob mentality rules. Look at bottled water. No one wanted it. When it was released everyone thought it was absolutely stupid. Now we have an entire generation or two that thinks its great. Even if you produce the information that conclusively proves the resistance to bottled water the "common sense" mob mentality is that its something we all asked for rather than a very aggressive and clever marketing campaign that worked.

DRM is identical to bottled water. It's going to happen. Our kids are going to think it's perfectly acceptable and in fact, they will start to ask for it. Though in the end, it won't really change anything because there is no money in actually changing things anymore.

Well, when you allow anyone to get away with anything for long enough, it becomes a defacto standard. Americans (I specify Americans as they are the only ones I have a clue about) cannot live without thier *toys* and will sacrifice anything to keep them. That is just the way it is. Just listen to the rationalizations. It is quite comical and sad, at times.

 

[Darunion]

Because DRM has worked so well right? Apparently Sony hasn't figured out that the only thing DRM prevents is informed consumers buying your shit.

It is like the "DO NOT PIRATE THIS MOVIE!" warning before a movie. The ones who pirate it, delete that and don't have to see it, only the legit purchasers do. As you said same with drm for games, download a copy game and it runs better than original.

 

[IcePickFreak]

How's that going to work? Are they're going to leverage your cpu cycles/power to view an e-book?

"Please increase your hash rate to view Chapter 3."

 

[MV75]

So I buy their blu-ray movie and have to be connected to verify it? Fuck off Sony.

Once the current must have the new shiny now generation grows up a bit and gets memories for those throw away things of the past and tries to either find or in the case of games play them again, they'll be shit out of luck. Future retro projects will be just getting old drm cracked to play again. They can have all the hardware, but there will be no supporting authentication servers anymore. They'll all play pirated versions, the authentic experience will be lost.

 

[MV75]

How's that going to work? Are they're going to leverage your cpu cycles/power to view an e-book?

"Please increase your hash rate to view Chapter 3."

And in the background will be running 20 hijack miners. Blockchain to me means security compromises so other scumbags can profit off me.

 

[Aireoth]

We live in a world where people "must by x" because of popular culture. It might not be true for us old farts but look at your teenagers. Try to explain to them how your entire generation somehow managed to survive without the internet or cell phones.. Trust me the looks you get will both crush your optimism in humanity and make you laugh.

We, unfortunately, are moving into a world where we can convince people of anything using the mob mentality rules. Look at bottled water. No one wanted it. When it was released everyone thought it was absolutely stupid. Now we have an entire generation or two that thinks its great. Even if you produce the information that conclusively proves the resistance to bottled water the "common sense" mob mentality is that its something we all asked for rather than a very aggressive and clever marketing campaign that worked.

DRM is identical to bottled water. It's going to happen. Our kids are going to think it's perfectly acceptable and in fact, they will start to ask for it. Though in the end, it won't really change anything because there is no money in actually changing things anymore.

You know you can just go outside, right?

 

[Nafensoriel]

You know you can just go outside, right?

I first purchased a cell phone in 2007. I take disturbing pleasure in forcing my younger coworkers to actually converse with their own voices rather than digital media especially when they have a new idea to share. They call me Professor Farnsworth because I actually have an angry dome.

Going outside isn't remotely related to what I typed but it seems like a relevant point to you so I will reply.

Going outside does not change modern marketings ability to convince people something is "in" or "required". Marketing is not evil. Business is not evil. However, a business ability to evolve is far faster than a societies ability to adapt. When I was younger the "local social group" was a town or your sector of a city. About 5-25k people. Sometimes local news would drag in something from Europe. The internet wasn't widespread enough for my generation to instantly know the weather in South Africa or Vietnam. So if an outlier ideology existed within that subgroup that was logically flawed the "mob mentality" of 25k people could dismiss the ramblings of 5 people easily.

Advance to today. We have access to over 2 billion people digitally at any given time. I could claim the sky was pink and get 100k people to say exactly the same thing. The inner psychology of humanity automatically makes us consider a topic when a large number of people agree with it. Hence the vector marketing uses to sell you pretty much everything today. It's not evil. It's just good business.. the trouble is plenty of people can't understand that they might be swayed by artificially "large" numbers because they cant internally fathom that 100k of 2 billion is insignificant.

Oddly enough this also applies to businesses. Sony has fallen to the same blockchain hype thinking its a one-stop fix for their problems. I highly doubt the decision makers understand blockchain technology enough to realize how limiting it's going to be for their products. They only see what the mass of peers says is great rather than the pitfalls and pigeonholes the technology forces their future decisions into.