Tech Mahindra Ltd., a provider of business consulting for digital transformation and reengineering solutions, today announced a new digital platform that will use distributed ledger blockchain technology to enhance digital rights management for the entertainment industry.

The solution, named “Blockchain Based Contracts and Rights Management System,” or bCRMS, is aimed at helping production houses and content creators transform their rights management systems to streamline and secure the process of rights and royalty tracking and protect intellectual property.

The new bCRMS will make use of IBM Corp.’s blockchain-based Hyperledger Fabric protocol, which will provide the infrastructure to provide content hashing and forensic watermarking to allow tracking and tracing content. As a result, the platform can be used within other industries that require intellectual property and secured digital content management such as trade, finance and healthcare.

“Fragmentation in the media and entertainment landscape has had a profound impact on media consumption,” said Rajesh Dhuddu, blockchain and cybersecurity practice leader of Tech Mahindra. “Both media production houses and ‘over-the-top’ players are creating intriguing content to improve customer stickiness and gain market share. This has led to an exponential increase in fraud with revenue lost due to online piracy estimated to approximately $50 billion by 2022.”

An over-the-top media service is one that offers streaming media directly to viewers via the internet. The OTT model bypasses cable, broadcast and television platforms, which are traditionally the mediators for most content delivered to viewers. This new model is driven by a greater number of potential viewers watching on computers, mobile devices and users of smart TVs with apps that access internet content.

By building on the IBM Blockchain, the platform will make it possible to restrict unauthorized access and redistribution of digital content, mitigate content piracy and manage royalty payments. It’s also designed to be scalable and empower artists, fulfillment partners and distributors using a clear, automated system for accessing and managing payments.

“As part of our TechMNxt charter, bCRMS is developed to usher in the next generation of digital rights management systems for the media and entertainment industry,” said Dhuddu. The idea is to “orchestrate the entire media content life cycle workflows across pre-production, post-production and distribution phases to enhance revenues, preempt contracts or rights infringement and focus on redefining end customer’s content consumption experience.”

The bCRMS will act as a replacement for the entire digital rights management workflow experience for media businesses by using the blockchain to record and track digital rights, smart contracts to resolve royalties automatically, provide distribution channel information and allow for a trustworthy historical record of media rights.

As of April this year, Tech Mahindra also joined IBM’s public cloud ecosystem, which will allow the company to help clients transform their operations to employ cloud computing and hybrid strategies that use blockchain technology to foster trust and transparency across industries.

The entertainment industry and royalty management systems couple well with blockchain technology’s distributed digital ledgers because they can be used to record and track ownership of digitized assets automatically. For example, European music marketplace ANote Music will launch its own royalty investment platform on July 28, Fenix uses blockchain technology to connect fans and artists and Raiinmaker’s blockchain platform rolled out in beta to encourage fans and influencers.

“Digital rights management is a pressing problem impacting artists, content creators and advertisers worldwide, potentially costing the industry billions every year,” said Alistair Rennie, general manager at IBM Blockchain. “Tech Mahindra’s innovation using IBM Blockchain helps address this challenge with a new approach that offers the digital media market the ability to track the quality and authenticity of content as well as track downloads and usage of content in a clear and flexible manner.”

Tech Mahindra is rolling out its platform on IBM’s Hyperledger Fabric starting today and is now available for customers that want to develop holistic applications and build out use cases in their respective industries.

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